What Do I Know?
By Peter LloydAn article published at the end of 2007 in the New York Times, "Innovative Minds Don’t Think Alike" by Janet Rae-Dupree, reminded me of what a knucklehead I've become. And not just me but all of us who think we know anything.
Janet describes how "the curse of knowledge" makes it difficult for experts to communicate with just anybody else. Knowing--and especially knowing something really well--makes it very difficult to appreciate what everybody else doesn’t know. This handicap manifests itself dramatically in new product development when, for example, an engineer designs a TV remote that even other engineers can't figure out how to use.
But there's a deeper danger in knowing. I once framed this phenomenon as the Wall of Knowledge. "All knowledge is provisional," I would pontificate and then go on to explain that everything we know is subject to change. Old facts, established laws, and all dogma eventually suffer modification.
It takes someone like Einstein to modify the great insights of someone like Newton, but we’ve all run into so-called laws thrown up like roadblocks in the way of our efforts to innovate. For example, I remember trying to convince a client to use a cartoon featuring a kangaroo character as an ad for his beer. "Never, ever use animals in beer advertising!” he fumed. "It’s an unwritten law." I wish I could have been around to see his reaction when Budweiser introduced Spuds MacKensie.
Edward de Bono, the man who gave us lateral thinking, illustrated the curse of knowledge in a presentation I witnessed. He asked his audience to imagine a bowl of Jell-O as someone introduces a small stream of warm water onto the flat surface of the dessert. By gently rocking the bowl, the water, de Bono predicted, would carve a shallow, meandering gully across the surface of the Jell-O.
When a second stream of water is introduced, it will do the same until it finds the gully made by the first stream. At which point the water will follow the already-cut path. And every time a new stream meets an old path, the water will always follow and deepen the older valley.
I tried de Bono’s experiment. It actually didn't work in real life, but it still works as a thought experiment. As a matter of fact, I live in a river valley. Our river hasn't wandered far from its well-worn path.
So here I am, after a couple of decades of sharing my ideas about creativity, innovation, problem-solving, and new-product development. Sometimes I actually think I know something about this nonsense. But now I’m afraid it’s all suspect. I think I already knew that, but it’s good to be reminded.
Thanks, Janet, for keeping me honest.
Peter Lloyd is co-creator with Stephen Grossman of Animal Crackers, the breakthrough problem-solving tool designed to crack your toughest problems.