Over on Innovation Ecosystem, Julie Fleischer touches on a favorite topic of mine in her post “What Language Do You Speak?” The crux of this piece is that we all learn and master the language of our discipline. That mastery, while a strength in our domain, is also a limitation because we tend to see the world through a filter formed by the language of our thinking.
This concept is very important for innovation practitioners. The most innovative solutions come from applying concepts from outside of the domain of the problem being solved. Yet, the solver is typically constrained by the language of the problem domain and thus precluded from seeing the truly novel solution. This means that we must make a conscious effort to break free of our self-imposed blinders if we are to find truly innovative solutions.
Thank you, Julie, for reminding us of this important truth of innovation.
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