Video transcript

WOMAN 1: One of the best examples I thought of free-thinking was a hot dog champ that you talk about. Because most people think, how do I eat more hot dogs? But he thought, what, Dougnar?

WOMAN 2: This is Kobayashi.

MAN 1: Takeru Kobayashi, who is, known as Koby, who's an amazingly interesting guy, and has become a friend of ours-- lives in New York now. So, instead of thinking, how can I, in these contests, eat more hot dogs, which is what the traditional competitive eaters thought. He thought, how can I make one hot dog easier to eat and broke it down, and because he asked a really different question, he came up with a totally different set of strategies, so wildly good that his first year out, he not only broke the world record, but doubled it. Which, world records don't get doubled.

WOMAN 1: What was his strategy?

MAN 1: Oh, you know, it involves many parts. Instead of feeding the dog with two hands, he would break it in half to start with, do some of the work with your hands that your mouth would otherwise be doing. Separate the dog from the bun, it's easier to swallow the dog alone. Dip the bun in warm water and soak the bun in warm water. So even if we don't want to become competitive eaters ourselves, we can all benefit from soaking our buns in warm water. That's the-- you know--

So, a lot of breaking down the problem, redefining the problem. And even though this is a kind of silly example-- none of us want to be competitive eating champions, I assume. Charlie, I don't know, maybe that's the dream. But what we try to say is that, whatever problem you're trying to solve; poverty, famine, income inequality, a lot of times we define the problem wrong. We look at the thing that bothers us most, as opposed to asking a new question and trying to get a new set of solutions.