MarshWorks

This New York Times article titled Innovative Minds Don’t Think Alike resonates with me.

IT’S a pickle of a paradox: As our knowledge and expertise increase, our creativity and ability to innovate tend to taper off. Why? Because the walls of the proverbial box in which we think are thickening along with our experience.

As a product designer, I see problems that need solutions that pull widely from many fields. But somehow, just getting the experts from all those fields into the room doesn't create innovation: just innovation death by committee. I've always felt that innovation is about listening - listening with respect and genuine get-your-mind-around-the-other-viewpoint understanding.

By listening, I can bring those competing expert viewpoints into a single holistic mental picture, and thus create something truly unique without suffering committee death: in the end I hold the whole picture of the product in my mind and can work out each detail until it is sketched, prototyped, and implemented.

This article expands my view of the "da Vinci model", as I think of it. It says:

“Look for people with renaissance-thinker tendencies, who’ve done work in a related area but not in your specific field,” she says.

The renaissance-thinker is wildly interdisciplinary. He sees relationships outside his own immediate expertise, because he either has multiple expertises or is able to truly listen and explore. The concept of neophyte expertise has long been important to me: the neophyte has no personal arrogance and is able to listen in a different way than the expert... and is willing to listen to more viewpoints.

The article also quotes my absolutely favorite marketing book: Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. I'll put together another post on this book sometime.... a profoundly simple way of thinking about communication in marketing and education.