A Matter of Supply and Demand

Supply without demand fills warehouses with unwanted products.

No amount of supply could ever create demand.

Demand lends urgency and value to whatever product is in supply.

If I am not mistaken, these statements offer an (admittedly simplistic) view of how the economy works.

More importantly, these lines also reflect how ideas impact us:

Ideas follow the rule of supply and demand.

Here’s an example to illustrate:

If I told you that the Quetzalcoatlus had the largest wingspan in the dinosaur world, how would you respond?

You’d probably nod thoughtfully and say ‘cool’.

But what if you were working on a crossword puzzle and the only question you couldn’t answer was “Which pterosaur had the largest wingspan?”

You’d spent all day mulling it over, but you simply could not find the correct word. Then, after hours of searching, I told you the same fun fact: Quetzalcoatlus had the largest wingspan.

How would your response differ from the previous situation?

You would likely be excited, run to your crossword puzzle, and fill in the boxes. This little statement of mine would lead to a moment of achievement. It would matter.

Thank you for reading Chisel&Feather!

Quetzalcoatlus: Did you care that it was the biggest?

Now, in both instances, the information I shared (the supply) was the exact same. The difference was the demand. In the first situation, there was no demand; in the second, there was, so the information was valuable to you.

In the world of ideas, demand arises the moment someone wonders about a topic, asks a question, or recognizes a problem. Essentially, demand is created when an individual cares about a subject.

I remember being taught in school how nuclear reactors work, how genetics influence a flower’s color, and how to calculate indefinite integrals. These are great topics, but teenage me had never wondered about reactors, flower genetics, or indefinite integrals. There was no demand to learn these things. And no amount of information could ever create a demand. Thus, what I learned about these topics was of little to no value to me.

The fundamental problem is this: offering answers to questions that a person has not yet asked substantially reduces the value of that information in the recipient's eyes.

Time to make this idea a bit catchy:

The answer isn’t always the solution.

Sometimes the question is the solution. It creates a demand. Demand increases the perceived value of ideas.

We need less “telling people what to do” and more “independent wrestling with problems.”

We need more people to care. Giving individuals answers to questions they have not asked does not make them care.

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The classroom: A place of much supply and little demand?

Image credit: Darren McGirr