Let's talk PENGUINS!
The penguin dilemma: the most important and least recognized model in innovation and technology choice...
The penguin dilemma: the most important and least recognized model in innovation and technology choice...
The setup: a colony of penguins perched on an ice float. All the penguins want to jump into the water, but nobody wants to go first. 
In the water, there's both yummy fish, and seal, who in turn find penguins yummy. So the dilemma for the colony is: how to collectively maximize fish while individually minimize the risk of becoming seal breakfast?
There's two basic answers: the individual solution and the collective solution. The individual is that the colony offers a risk reward to the penguins who volunteer to go first (and survive).
This accounts for all kinds of foolhardy, reckless, and vainglorious endeavors undertaken in the search for death or glory (typically by males) throughout history, from the Trojan War to Lambo chancing.
The alternative is to form a collective, to push each other forward, to try and persuade each other to all jump at the same time, in order to minimize individual risk.
