Don’t panic: tech, uncertainty, and towels

If you haven’t already, subscribe and join our community in receiving weekly tech insights, updates, and interviews with industry experts straight to your inbox.

Be inspired by tech insights and storytelling – in your inbox every week. 

This week we’re quoting…

Douglas Adams (Science Fiction Author)

What Adams wrote: 

“Don’t panic.” 

The most honest advice in science fiction

Every January, tech does the same dance. 

We publish predictions and refresh our roadmaps. We talk confidently about what this year will bring. 

But if we’re being completely honest, uncertainty has become the only reliable constant.

Which is why The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy feels unexpectedly relevant right now – because it refuses to pretend the future is knowable.

Lesson one: certainty is overrated

In Adams’ universe, the most powerful tool is adaptability. Which makes it very relatable for today’s tech industry. 

The Hitchhiker’s Guide itself is famously unreliable and incomplete, and occasionally completely wrong. But you could argue it’s still more useful than rigid authority, because it’s designed to be updated. Continuously.

We like the parallel here with how tech actually works. 

The teams that struggle most with uncertainty tend to be the ones clinging hardest to certainty: fixed plans, immovable timelines, and narratives that assume stability is just around the corner.

The teams that cope better? They plan, of course – but they do it lightly. They revise often. They leave room for surprise, and they’re open to changing those plans whenever it makes sense to do so. 

Lesson two: humour is a survival skill

Humour in The Hitchhiker’s Guide is armour. 

When the universe is absurdly complex, taking everything too seriously becomes a total liability. You miss important signs and lock into bad assumptions. You confuse confidence with actually knowing what’s going on.

In tech, humour can be a sign of perspective – an acknowledgement that no model or strategy document can capture the full picture.

We think a little dash of humour creates space for curiosity. And curiosity is what keeps teams learning instead of panicking.

Lesson three: always know where your towel is

If you’ve read the book, you know the rule: a towel is the most useful object an interstellar traveller can carry.

It’s not specialised or impressive, but it is endlessly adaptable. For the interstellar hitchhiker, a towel provides warmth, becomes a makeshift sail for a raft, and works as a distress signal. And when a non-hitchhiker sees you with a towel, they assume you’re well-prepared and trustworthy. 

In organisational terms, towels look like:

• transferable skills
• systems that flex and adapt
• teams that can reconfigure when conditions change

Nothing flashy there; but when things go wrong, you’ll be OK. 

What does this mean for tech right now?

We’re heading into another year of rapid change. So maybe the most useful posture right now is composure. 

You might not be 100% confident that you know what to do, but you do know you can figure things out when you have to. 

Planning and vision and ambition are still important.

But pretending the future is predictable doesn’t make it so.

Sometimes the smartest move is acknowledging uncertainty early so you can design for it explicitly. 

And when everything feels chaotic, remember: don’t panic.

See you at LEAP 

Each year at LEAP we hear founders and technologists compare notes on how they plan and stay grounded when the ground itself keeps shifting. Join those conversations and prepare for your tech future at LEAP 2026 – get your pass now to join us in Riyadh this April.

Have an idea for a topic you'd like us to cover? We're eager to hear it. Drop us a message and share your thoughts.

Catch you next week,
The LEAP Team