While I was staring at my feet, workingworkingworking, making the most of a $5 million engineering budget, marketing was getting $10–15 million. I needed to understand why.

So I asked.

And that’s what changed everything. As soon as I started talking to different teams, I realized my superpower.

Academics who have studied this stage call it “capital market myopia.” In a famous 1987 case study, William Sahlman and Howard Stevenson showed how dozens of entrants into the then emerging Winchester disk drive industry blew through a mountain of investment, each hoping for a small share of a vast market. Such phenomena occur when players make decisions that are individually sensible but fail to take into account the collective consequences of everybody making the same decision.

The first principle of improvisation—hearing offers—hinges on attunement, leaving our own perspective to inhabit the perspective of another.

Offers come in all shapes and sizes,” says Salit. But the only way to hear them is to change the way you listen and then change the way you respond.

Nineteen centuries ago, the Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus said, “Nature hath given men one tongue but two ears, that we may hear from others twice as much as we speak.” Unfortunately, not many people listened to him.