Bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell says it takes 10,000 hours to become expert at something, whether it's playing the guitar, charting the stars or writing software code. In his landmark book Outliers: The Story of Success, Gladwell looks at why certain people are successful and postulates that, among other things, a combination of circumstances and the ability to become expert at something produces truly exceptional people and ideas.
That's an interesting thesis on the part of Gladwell, and perhaps true in yesteryear, but in today's world of growing exponential technologies, I beg to differ.
I believe that people who will come up with creative solutions to solve the world's biggest problems -- ecological devastation, global warming, the global debt crisis and distribution of dwindling natural resources, to name a few -- will not be experts in their fields. The real disruptors will be those individuals who are not steeped in one industry of choice with those coveted 10,000 hours of experience, but instead, individuals who approach challenges with a clean lens, bringing together diverse experiences, knowledge and opportunities.
And while experts will have a part to play in solving today's looming crises where incremental evolution is needed, I believe that non-expert individuals will drive disruptive innovation. Here's why.
Myopic Thinking
Sure -- there will always be a need for experts, who will continue to drive steady incremental advancements in fields such as biotechnology, environmental sciences, or information technology. But I believe that the best ideas come from those not immersed in the details of a particular field. Experts, far too often, engage in a kind of myopic thinking. Those who are down in the weeds are likely to miss the big picture. To my mind, an expert is in danger of becoming a robot, toiling ceaselessly toward a goal but not always seeing how to connect the dots.
The human brain, or more specifically the neo-cortex, is designed to recognize patterns and draw conclusions from them. Experts are able to identify such patterns related to a specific problem relevant to their area of knowledge. But because non-experts lack that base of knowledge, they are forced to rely more on their brain's ability for abstraction, rather than specificity. This abstraction--the ability to take away or remove characteristics from something in order to reduce it to a set of essential characteristics--is what presents an opportunity for creative solutions.
Innovation and Information in Abundance
I also believe that the value of expertise is diminished in a world dominated by two trends: the accelerating pace of innovation and the ubiquity of information. Today, technology moves at such a rapid pace that it is nearly impossible to keep up. With technological advances occurring at breakneck speed, expertise is obsolete within five to 10 years. Think of all the industries turned on their heads by Internet disintermediation, whether it was book and magazine publishing, the printing industry, the recording industry or retail sales, to name a few. MySpace rose and fell from grace as the world's leading social network in less than five years and pundits already question whether the era of Facebook, with its more than 900 million active users, is over.
The digital revolution has also meant a revolution in access to information. This puts more power and knowledge into the hands of non-experts. Open-source encyclopedias such as Wikipedia and search engines such as Google and Bing, which people can tap into anytime and anywhere via computers and smart phones, put a world of knowledge at our fingertips at a lower cost than ever before. Granted, they alone don't make us experts--but they give us access to information in abundance, giving us a greater base from which to "think big."
Some of the most inspiring and innovative minds I know are such disruptors. Take Elon Musk, a fellow trustee at the X-PRIZE Foundation. The South African-born engineer and entrepreneur has never hesitated to venture into new waters where he had no industry expertise but felt he could make a difference. The former founder of PayPal is now CEO and CTO of SpaceX, a private company sending cost-effective space launch vehicles and rockets into space, and is co-founder and head of product design at Tesla Motors, where he led development of the electric vehicle Tesla Roadster.
The goal must be to expand ourselves beyond one field of focus and use our improved access to information to solve the very real and extreme economic, environmental and resource challenges we face as an interconnected, global society. I believe the time is now, before our looming crises bring us to the brink of destruction, to embolden those disruptive individuals to help innovate our way out of the significant challenges our planet faces today.
This story originally appeared in our weekly iPad magazine, Huffington, in the iTunes App store.
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Or at least asked, how?
You don't have to take a deep breath or lay down but, this might work better if it were daytime and you were just coming in from, or soon having to go out into, the rain... Daytime is good but perhaps the most important thing is the rain though, nighttime against the window and the walls is good too.
There is a place, right there... where you are, where there is a sunny day, everyday. Broach this subject with someone who hasn't read this thread and they probably won't have a clue. And when they look at as though you've just proved something they've been thinking about you... say, “above the clouds.”
And it's true it's always a sunny day above the clouds. In the lower forty nine, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, sun up to sun down, a sunny day, as close to forever... as need be; always.
So, the whole thing about solar power, and, cloudy days...
Now I've shown you a little, of mine, and Occupy the Universe, (took my tongue out of my cheek on that one) is about moving humanity to what is called near space.
We should live in the sky, and, there is a sunny day everyday above the clouds.
Occupy the Universe.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2002198103_dotcon1main06.html
Experts are useful. They are the real innovators. Don't hate them. Let your children to be one.
I recall for over a century people swore that humans only used 10% of their brain, because someone wrote it once. Now we know thats not true. Well, for some people thats not true..
Larry Page, and Sergey Brin, on the other hand were true creative innovators who were also tech savy...........as were many others. It plays all ways. It's just rare, but fortunately a lot less rare than people who make millions without any innovation at all!
Arianna, why are you letting this happen???
Medical "experts" have attributed this discrepancy to dietary factors, specifically the amount of fiber in the diet. But all attempts to confirm this theory have failed. Recent studies on colon cancer and diverticulosis are the most prominent examples. But for the past 12 years, I have been advocating a different approach.
I have collected a wealth of evidence that the cause is the unnatural method of defecation and childbirth used in our society. This hypothesis is disruptive in many senses -- most notably in that it deals with a taboo subject. Rather than prolong this comment, I would invite readers to consider the thesis presented at http://www.naturesplatform.com/health_benefits.html . I am grateful to Naveen Jain for his innovative perspective on disruptive innovation.
Until someone uses the field to grow pot.