As the rep had recognized, human interaction is the key force in overcoming resistance and speeding change.
I believe that the 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 who approach challenges with a clean lens, bringing together diverse experiences, knowledge and opportunities.
Myopic Thinking
Sure, there will always be a need for experts to continue to drive steady incremental advancements in fields such as biotechnology, environmental sciences or information technology. But 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. In 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.