Innovative Minds Don’t Think Alike
By JANET RAE-DUPREE
Published: December 30, 2007
"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."
The "curse of knowledge: In other words, it becomes nearly impossible to look beyond what you know and think outside the box you’ve built around yourself."
"Look for people with renaissance-thinker tendencies, who’ve done work in a related area but not in your specific field."
2 comments:
i like the idea you're expressing here, but very much dislike the title. Renaissance men were not dabblers, they were in fact experts. Perhaps the most famous examples are the 16th century icons from the Italian peninsula, Leonardo (painting, sculpting, engineering, invention) and Michelangelo (sculpting, painting, architecture, poetry, natural sciences). i found your blog while searching for a particular Enlightenment polymath, so i've basically just glanced at it, but i do find your blog title to be oxymoronic. ....surely though i'm just being overly picky - i do like what seems to be your emphasis on free thinking and innovation:-)
I think there's a wide gap between the level of expertise of the Renaissance and the degree of specialization that's becoming prevalent now in highly educated workers.
In my opinion, what made the Renaissance thinkers remarkable in history was their breadth of knowledge and how they integrated different disciplines -- not their specific (though considerable) expertise.
Breadth of skill is lacking in today's workforce. I know quite a few smart engineers who are native English speakers and fluent in multiple programming languages. Some of them don't understand that apostrophes aren't used to make words plural. That's a 4th grade language skill.
And yes, the blog title is deliberately oxymoronic as I am both oxygenated and moronic -- at least compared to the leaders of the Renaissance.
Thanks for your comment, PaxRyan.
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