U are Stupid! This was the most common sentence I heard for a long time from friends, family and early investors when I used to describe to them my weird plans on how gaming is going to be big in India. That was in an era when PCs were just introduced to India....and no one had even heard about the Internet. And recently we all witnessed 3 Idiots become the biggest Indian blockbuster. I thought there is really something special about Being Stupid! I want to take you through 3 of my learnings on the same.

As a student, if you ever try confronting your teacher about a particular subject or tell your boss something in the business strategy is missing or tell your parents that you want to be an artist or join a band and not do an MBA or Engineering... You will most likely be called Stupid. Most people fall into the trap and leave their stupidity and go ahead and do what other smart people do. But some of them who do stick to their stupid idea change the world.

There are thousands of examples of people from Galileo to now who were called stupid but later termed as the biggest visionaries of their time. Let me give you a recent example of Mark Pincus, founder of Zynga. When I briefly met Mark over two years ago in Seattle, he described to me that his company was named after his dog and his plan was to dominate gaming with very simple games such as FarmVille and Mafia wars. Many people, including me, thought his ideas were stupid and his games mediocre in comparison with 100s of million dollars spent on console games.... Well, the rest is history and Zynga games are the most played games in the World.

So my first lesson is something very simple.

If people call you Stupid, you are onto something big .

The other thing that goes along with stupidity is risk. Formal education and traditional structures of society define limits and paths for everything. 4Ps of marketing, DCF valuation, career paths and they even have Murphy's law as an explanation for when things go wrong. There is always some formula or right method defined which people more or less follow. Taking risks is bad and everybody is now talking about taking a Calculated Risk which takes all the boundaries into consideration, including a Plan B and Plan C. However, for a stupid person there is no Plan B or C since they don't have the burden of being in the box, they can think out of the box and attempt and achieve what other people think is impossible.

It's more risky crossing the road, than swimming with the sharks, however conventional wisdom will want you to take what is perceived as a safe bet which, according to me, is actually very risky and by crossing the road you end up as one among the millions who are doing the same, verses the few who swim with the sharks. There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.

I still remember in 2004 when I told my investors that we would spend all our money to acquire the rights to Spider-man and release a game worldwide ..they thought I was stupid betting the company, while I was convinced that it's Spiderman who would save the day....and no doubt it became the best selling game of that time. That brings me to my next lesson

It's the stupid who swim with the sharks

When we talk about successful people whom we initially thought were stupid we somehow start talking about Passion. Whether it's entrepreneurs, sportsmen, artists or writers, the most common word used to define their success is passion.

So what really is passion? While most people look at the world through numbers, formulas, research and charts, it is gut feeling that powers the decisions of the stupid, they look at things like relationship and conviction and always really have no real logic to defend their decisions. They are always optimistic about their plans. They are not afraid to fail, as something worse than failure is not trying. Now, if you are Steve Jobs, people call you a visionary, but what powers this irrational optimism in ordinary stupid people on their way to greatness is what I would call passion. This is what makes them keep trying even after the 100th failure with the same excitement

Hence my third lesson is...

Stupidity drives passion and Passion drives Stupidity

So whether it is a risk or a hunch or a gut feeling, if you know it will work, ignore the voices you hear because, soon, instead of stupid you will hear super, and go ahead and bet the farm, Be Stupid!

The author is Founder & CEO of Indiagames. Access his blogs at www.godinchief.com

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