Hiding in Plain Sight

Breakthroughs rarely announce themselves with flashing lights. Often, they are hiding in plain sight, waiting for a trained observer to notice a subtle anomaly in an everyday setting.

Live lizards that all looked strangely similar were found. The setting for this biological find was not a remote jungle expedition. Instead, Ngô Văn Trí of the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology found live lizards for sale in a restaurant.

The Power of the Anomaly

Ngô became intrigued when he noticed that all of the lizards appeared to be female. Noting that the reptiles all looked strangely similar, Ngô sent pictures to a colleague, Grismer, and his son Jesse Grismer. Eventually the Grismers examined almost 70 of the lizards, and all turned out to be females.

This sequence may highlight one part of human judgement: noticing patterns that depart from what is expected. One reading is that the barrier to noticing was attention rather than access.

In fields ranging from scientific research to product development, organizations frequently assume that uncovering something entirely new requires accessing uncharted territory. Vast resources are spent searching the edges of the map. Yet this find may suggest that insights can surface in busy, everyday places. Perhaps the scarcer resource is the capacity to notice when something ordinary is behaving strangely.

Perhaps discovery is sometimes just closer attention to the ordinary.

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