The Village Venus effect describes the experience of someone living in an isolated village and knowing the most beautiful person there. Because the person is the most attractive person they've ever seen, it's easy to think that no one could be more so. Yet, beyond the village is a whole world of people, many of whom could be more beautiful.

The Village Venus effect can remind us that we often think within context and constraints without realising or considering what may be outside them. In that way, it can nudge us to think bigger or look outside our sphere of familiarity.

Travel is always an eye-opener for me. I'm consistently surprised (I should probably get used to it now and stop being surprised) at how ideas or delicious foods from one country or region don't reach others. Sometimes, the simplest way to innovate is to learn what people already do elsewhere.

In design research projects, we deliberately went on inspiration trips to broaden our thinking and escape the Village Venus Effect, often looking at adjacent industries. For example, when working on a premium sports equipment project, you could visit premium food stores to see what makes a food premium. Working in the US, I consistently found Asian stores a great source of inspiration for thinking wider.

I remember each time I went to the next level of my education (primary, secondary, college, Masters, PhD) whether, even though I had achieved well at my current level, I would fit in with the next calibre of students.

The Village Venus effect is related to the challenge of local optimisation—not realising there may be a higher level elsewhere—and the Dunning-Kruger effect, where it's hard to evaluate your level before you know how good "the best" can be. It's also an example of something Daniel Kahneman called What You See Is All There Is—WYSIATI.

If you're hiring and you interview five candidates, should you hire the best of those you've seen, or could there be a set of candidates in a different pool who would all be a better fit than those you've spoken with?

How many builders should you meet with before you're confident you have one who'll do an excellent job for your project?

How often do we unintentionally limit our choices by only looking at the immediate options presented to us?

The Village Venus is a term from lateral thinking originator Edward De Bono.

For a funnier take on the Village Venus watch Flight of the Conchords, The Most Beautiful Girl in the Room.

Things get more complex before they get simple

Lateral thinking: increasing the breadth of options

Lateral thinking: you don't have to be right at every step

The Village Venus Effect

Practise thinking in space and time. An alternative to Powers of 10 that encourages you to look at a situation in space and time. Helpful for getting a new perspective. The easiest way I know is to literally draw the boxes. Start with what you’re dealing with in the centre then start filling the rest out. Another tool from the TRIZ toolkit.

9 Windows

Edward De Bono talks a lot about provocation as a means, for example, of deliberating provoking something impossible just to provide a new perspective. For example, when trying to design a car that’s better for passengers you might provoke with something like, what would a car look like that didn’t go anywhere. Of course, you probably need the car to go somewhere, but it might lead to an idea that the doors needn’t be at the side, that the roof might change height, or that you could plumb it in. It may lead nowhere. Then again, it may lead to something new and interesting in the next step.

In case you missed the previous posts, Fundamentals of Lateral Thinking:

You don’t have to be right at every step

Lateral thinking: 4. Lateral thinking changes perspective just to be provocative

I love the principle behind this — that you can get to something that works without having things that are possible and would work along the way.

A stickier way of saying a similar thing is:

"There is nothing more dangerous than to leap a chasm in two jumps"

Lateral thinking: 3. You don’t have to be right at every step

During lateral thinking labels don’t have to clearly be one thing or another, they can be flexible. The phablet is a reasonable recent example of how existing terms and definitions can constrain on your thinking.

Lateral thinking: 2. Labels are not collectors but signposts. They are not fixed

There’s a lot of mention of lateral thinking without a whole lot of knowledge about the what and the why of it. Very often it seems that it’s just brainstorming. Here’s a short set of some of the fundamentals of lateral thinking. In this one the point really is that lateral thinking doesn’t solve things by itself, but you need both lateral and vertical thinking at different times. And they are very hard to do together because they are quite different mindsets.

As I understand it, Lateral thinking is from Edward de Bono.

Lateral thinking sketches