I was just talking with a good friend of mine about innovation at his company when he said something that really clicked with me. He said, “The expert doesn’t think; they just know.” Of course, this defines perfectly one of the biggest impediments to innovation—psychological inertia.
Experts are to be respected. They are tremendous resources which every organization would like to cultivate. After all, they are experts—people with an amazing ability to wield internalized knowledge at any time to tackle difficult problems that the mere mortals among us would struggle to approach.
But these same experts can be detractors of innovation. Their very strength comes from their ability to apply the same knowledge in a repeatable manner. This is great when the problem at hand fits their known solution paradigm. But, not every problem is a nail. The expert’s facile application of knowledge is also the expert’s Achilles’ heel.
This is why even the experts among us need to admit that we can benefit from learning structured innovation methods. These methods of innovative problem solving take us out of familiar paradigms and force us to change our way of thinking. This allows the expert and non-expert alike the opportunity to consider novel approaches.
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