During the 18th century, the royal courts of Europe were hungry for fresh and exciting entertainment formats. The serious choral recital, the piano concerto, plays and opera had been the norm in all the great palaces for centuries. Each cut strove to offer something more modern, edgy and contemporary.
In 1769, the Empress of Austria, Maria Theresa, invited a member of her entourage named Baron Wolfgang Von Kempelen to attend a conjuring show. Sleight of hand was an emerging art form of magical performances. After the show was completed, Baron Von Kempelen loudly announced that the show was boring and that he could do better.
The empress accepted the baron in his statement. She issued a challenge, which the Baron accepted, to return in six months with a brand new show. The Baron began to put together the program that, for 85 years, would seduce and amaze audiences in Europe, America and South America.
The presentation of “the Turk”, a mechanical robot that plays chess, created an immediate sensation. A wooden man dressed in a turban and oriental garb sat behind a square box with an ornate chessboard on top. Von Kempelen rotated the case, opening the doors on each side, revealing a complex series of intricately crafted clock-like gears, bearings, and movements. By turning a giant key, he would activate the mechanism and the Turk would be ready to play. The baron chose a passionate court chess player as the Turk’s first opponent. The Turk played very fast, with a lot of determination and easily beat his initial rival, to the astonishment of the court.
After the Empress’s death, her successor, Emperor Joseph, arranged for Baron Von Kempelen to tour Europe with the incredible Turk. The chess-playing robot was a sensation everywhere. He played all corners and almost never lost. He faced Benjamin Franklin, considered a Grandmaster, in Paris and easily beat the great American.
The Turk’s most famous match was played in 1799 against Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon was at the height of his power and was considered the most brilliant military, government and political strategist of his day. He prepared for his match with the Turk as if he were preparing for the invasion of Egypt. He studied the robot’s strategies, the pace of play, and the aggressive tactics the machine had used to beat the best chess players across Europe, where chess was played as a non-lethal substitute for war.
Napoleon decided on a disruptive strategy. He decided to attack the Turk’s lack of emotion, human instinct and reasoning. After all, wasn’t he playing a machine? When the long-awaited match began, Napoleon began to negotiate alternative game rules, slowing down the agreed pace of the game (very fast, no move withdrawal, etc.) and making moves outside the parameters of the chess rules. The Turk became furious (showing emotion), frustrated (weakness), and swept the chess pieces off the board (physical anger), all treacherous emotions that a machine could not possess. This was an 18th century form of rope to dope.
The match with Napoleon exposed the Turk as a small human being, an expert chess player, manipulating the movement arm of the wooden dummy to make chess moves through a series of hinges. Matches had to be played quickly due to the tight confines of the box in which the diminutive player was hidden.
Napoleon’s reputation for shrewd tactics, incisiveness, and creativity was greatly embellished by the rapid spread of news of the results of the chess match with the Turk. His reputation for making unpredictable moves was reinforced and made his opponents even more wary of his potential for ruthless behavior. This was a man to be feared, and his tactics would become more creative, cunning, and novel. The ability to innovate and create the aura of a feared and feared leader became Napoleon’s greatest asset as a warrior and Emperor of France.
Another great warrior from even more distant times was Alexander the Great. A warrior at 14, a general at 18, and king of little Macedonia at 20, Alexander conquered most of the known world before his untimely death at age 32. He is considered the greatest military tactician of all time.
Alexander lived during the fourth century BC, at a time when mysticism, myth, and superstitions were an intricate part of everyday life. The Gordian Knot puzzle was considered one of the world’s great mysteries. Outside the Temple of Zeus, in the city of Gordus, was a bullock cart with an unusually complicated hitch knot. The world famous Gordian knot was composed of a densely packed corner bark and there was no visible beginning or end to the knot’s maze. The priests and oracles of that time claimed that Zeus had promised that whoever could undo the knot would rule the world.
Princes, tyrants, and dreamers came from all over the world to test their skill against the astonishingly complex Gordian Knot. None had managed to loosen the entangled orb. Just as Napoleon approached the chess match with the Turk, Alexander planned the strategy for his encounter with the Knot as if he were going into his famous military campaign against King Darius and the Persians.
He spent several hours pondering the Gordian knot. Alexander knew that success in loosening the Gordian knot would herald his reputation as the world’s greatest king and military strategist. He would further motivate his army and fear his enemies. Then, with sudden violence, Alexander seized a great ax and swung it hard. Hitting the massive Gordian knot squarely in the center, he split open like a pear. The twisted mass of the knot was severed and fell to the ground, freeing the oxcart for the first time in centuries.
Alexander, like Napoleon many centuries later, saw a problem that had troubled men for many years. He took a creative, innovative and actually the simplest approach to the task. The riddle of the Gordian knot did not come with a fixed set of rules that had to be followed to claim success: simply remove the knot from the oxcart. The simplicity of the task was shrouded in mystery, legend, and the proximity of immense power and riches. Surely such a reward could not be achieved so simply! Where was the beginning and end of the knot? Alexander understood that the conventional approaches to the problem, followed for centuries by everyone else trying to untie the knot, were neither relevant nor of any importance.
Alexander the Great said that his greatest victory was his success in solving the puzzle of the Gordian knot. This achievement confirmed to the whole world that this man was a gifted, intelligent and outside the box thinker (a term certainly not used in the time of Alexander the Great). Successful entrepreneurs must develop this same set of skills as creative problem solvers, addressing the insatiable market and consumer need for novel solutions and useful features to respond to today’s problems and opportunities.
