An experiment was conducted in 2002 at the Tucson Conference on “Toward a Science of Consciousness”, sponsored by the Center for Consciousness Studies at The University of Arizona, USA.The observers were asked to watch very closely two teams of participants throw a ball back and forth. The observers were told to focus on the team with the white shirts and count closely the number of times the ball was being caught and thrown. Focus on the ball! While they were doing this a man dressed up in a Gorilla costume walked directly through the space in which the two parties were throwing the ball back and forth - directly through the line of sight. What percentage of the observers did NOT see the gorilla?

There are 4 choices. Did 10%, 25%, 50% or 75% of the observers NOT see the Gorilla?


The answer is 50% of the people watching the ball did not see the Gorilla.


This describes the core challenge that we all face in discovering and realizing opportunities from problems. And that all companies face in building their capability to meet competitive threats, to innovate, to extract maximum value from innovation and to strengthen the thinking capacity of their executives to resolve increasingly greater complexities.


If we go through life and business fully focused only on our individual tasks, we miss opportunities that are out of our focus. We can only see them by shifting our mental models,the lenses through which we see the world. This is the way problems get transformed and change is realized.

Seeing the Gorillas is the beginning.

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Toward a Science of Consciousness, "Tucson 2002" Tucson Convention Center Music Hall, Tucson, Arizon
April 8-12, 2002, Sponsored by the Center for Consciousness Studies at The University of Arizona

The Power of Impossible Thinking: Transform the Business of Your Life and the Life of Your Business by Jerry Wind , Colin Crook , Robert Gunther (Wharton School Publishing, August, 2004).