Chicken And Egg: How To Know What Causes What

Which came first, the chicken, or the egg? This is an age-old dilemma. It refers to a circular problem where it’s difficult to determine what came first. Otherwise known as a catch-22, the idiom suggests a situation where two events depend on each other, making it hard to determine which is the cause and which is the effect. It puts us in a continuous loop with no clear resolution. Does stress cause poor sleep, or does poor sleep cause stress? You need feedback to improve your product before launch, but to get feedback, you need users. Does economic growth result in innovation, or does innovation result in economic growth?

Back to those chickens and eggs for a moment. We’ll get to the metaphor. For real now: was it the chicken, or was it the egg? Evolutionary biology can answer that question. Knowing the Darwinian principle — that species evolve over time — we can infer that chickens had non-chicken ancestors. Thus the answer is, of course, the egg. The chicken arose through interbreeding and domestication of multiple species of jungle fowl. It still boils down to the same answer however. An animal that was nearly identical to the modern chicken laid an egg. From that egg, due to mutations in the mother’s ovum, the father’s sperm, or the fertilized zygote, came the modern chicken. Want to be a know-it-all at any party? Start talking about chickens and eggs.

Revert to the catch-22 or metaphorical sense of the chicken and egg problem. They are situations where you need something that can only be obtained by not being in need of it. Think: qualifying for a loan. The only way to prove yourself worthy of a loan is to give the bank a clean record. But that’s exactly why you need the loan in the first place: your finances suck. Catch-22 situations are very popular nowadays because much of modern society operates on bureaucratic hocus pocus. There are countless unwritten rules, many of which are contradictory to how the world really works. This creates a paradox of dependency where one component seems impossible without establishing the other, much like the chicken has to lay the egg from which a chicken hatches.

The key concept here is a systemic dependency. Each part depends on the existence of the other to proceed. A new social network platform struggles to attract new users. People won’t join because friends aren’t already using it. But friends won’t join because there aren’t many users. A paradox. The interdependent nature of the components results in a stalemate. A market which prerequisites both buyers and sellers cannot launch when either one is missing. Bootstrapping is the method that tries to overcome this dilemma. Initial efforts, resources, or incentives are introduced to kick-start one component. Take the examples of offering initiatives to early users, funding an early-stage startup, or seeding a social platform with content to create a starting point.

Real-world examples of the chicken and egg dilemma:

• Online Networks: a new social media platform struggles to gain traction. Because it has few users. People are reluctant to join a platform where they have no connections. Overcoming this would look something like inviting a group of influential users or pre-loading the platform with valuable or entertaining content.

• Marketplace: an online marketplace needs both buyers and sellers to function. Sellers can be hesitant to list products, since there’s low buyer traffic. Buyers may avoid a site with limited options. To break this cycle, marketplaces subsidize one side (e.g. offering free listings for sellers) until a certain amount of users is reached.

• Product: a technology company is launching a new device (e.g. a smartphone). It relies on the availability of complementary apps and/or services. Developers may wait to create apps for the phone until there’s a large user base. But users don’t need a device that has no functionality. Hence companies sometimes incentivize developers or release software themselves to make the device more practical.

• Transportation and Infrastructure: a new public transport system struggles to be financially viable if ridership is low. Thus it lacks the funds to adhere to quality standards. People are less likely to use a transit system that appears underdeveloped. This, in a cyclical fashion, discourages further investment in expansion. Which is why you see cities subsidize early transit development to boost initial visitors.

How you might use the chicken and egg problem as a mental model: (1) identify the genetically modified fowl — map out the key components and stakeholders in your system to understand how they rely on each other, perhaps via a flowchart or dependency tree; (2) burn that rocket fuel — implement a bootstrapping measure to kick-start one part of a system to overcome the initial hurdle, such as by giving early app users special benefits or pre-loading a platform with valuable content; (3) concentrate on critical mass — determine the threshold at which networks become self-sustaining (e.g. sufficient revenue, users, clients, to keep operating); (4) be a selfish prick — collaborate with established players, popular brands, and/or influencers to jumpstart your product, platform, service, whatever; (5) make their eyes twinkle — share a compelling vision of the benefits early adopters will get once the system takes off.