She teaches a class at Stanford and offers each team $5 of 'funding' in an envelope. She tells them that once they open the envelope, they have 2 hours to make as much money as they can.

She cites three teams' approaches:

1) First team opens a free stand that offers to check peoples bike tire pressure for free, then charges $1 to inflate if necessary. This team changes midstream to accepting donations instead of charging, and makes more money. Lauded for rapid iteration.

2) Second team makes lots of reservations at local restaurants, and then sells them to people waiting in line for same restaurant. Didn't use the $5 at all. Lauded for realizing that the $5 constraint was artificial, and that using it constrained their thinking.

3) Third team skipped the exercise, and sold their 3 minute class presentation time as a advertisement to a local company. Made the most money. Instead of presenting, they recruited. Lauded for realizing that the 2 hours was also artificially hampering their thinking.

Personally, I found the presentation glib and condescending, and the solutions immoral and dishonest. I'm hoping for good discussion about the issues here, but I would not recommend the video.

See, the problem here is that she hands out two artificial constraints, and then praises the teams who ignore the constraints.

1. Used a device to measure the tire pressure and materials to build the booth and signs. Did they cost less than $5? Maybe. Did it take less than 2 hours to create the booth, the signs, and perform the services? Unlikely.

2. Well done on finding something you can acquire for free and then sell. However: did they make the reservations at 6pm and then sell them before 8pm? If not, the process of making the money took more than the 2 hours allotted.

3. You had two hours. Instead, you spent 2 hours talking to an advertising company and then a week later you sold 3 minutes of your time. Total time used to make $650: a week. In the real world you can't just discount lead time and idle time; that's a mistake made by a lot of starving contractors.

The point of the puzzle is to work inside the constraints. "Thinking outside the box" is a great skill and all, but basically all these teams are doing is finding creative ways of breaking the rules. It means the puzzle isn't "make the most money in 2 hours with $5", it means the puzzle is "find out how far you can stretch these rules without being disqualified". Points for creativity, sure, but that wasn't the problem.

Imagine you're a complex number, which is just a type of 2-vector.

Exponentiation is to do with growth at a speed which is a multiple of how big you are already.

i is the multiplication which turns you through ninety degrees.

If you grow in a direction which is at right angles to yourself, you turn rather than increasing in magnitude.

Pi is how long it takes you to turn through a half circle.

So if you grow at right angles to yourself for time pi, you are pointing the opposite way.

You nailed it.

If you had not stood your ground, you would have sacrificed all your hard work for nothing.

If you had pushed any more than you did, you would have created an unnecessary drama that would have diverted your focus.

You feel badly right now because you're normal. This shall pass.

Even the fact that you registered a puppet account to discuss this clearly demonstrates that you know how to handle a delicate business matter. If the quality of your product matches the integrity of your character, you have great success awaiting you.

Respect.

If you're not thinking of watching the video, think again. Even if you watch just the last two minutes. There's a good twist in the tail in the way the most successful team made the most money :-)

I know we've been over this a million times before, but the whole "FAIL" thing really turns me off. I actually agree with the points but had to force myself to click the link because I immediately assumed the OP was a linkbating troll.