By Tom Ryan
The more knowledge and expertise you gain, the less you remain open to new ideas. That's the premise of the "curse of knowledge," a phrase used in a 1989 paper in The Journal of Political Economy yet also a problem that continues to stifle creativity and innovation in the business world.
"Your conversations with others in the field are peppered with catch phrases and jargon that are foreign to the uninitiated," tech-writer Janet Rae-Dupree wrote recently in an article in The New York Times. "When it's time to accomplish a task - open a store, build a house, buy new cash registers, sell insurance - those in the know get it done the way it has always been done, stifling innovation as they barrel along the well-worn path."
Chip Heath, a co-author of the book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, claims that's why engineers design products ultimately useful only to other engineers. It's also why managers have trouble convincing underlings to adopt new processes, and ad execs struggle to convey nifty commercial messages to consumers.
"I have a DVD remote control with 52 buttons on it, and every one of them is there because some engineer along the line knew how to use that button and believed I would want to use it, too," Mr. Heath told The Times. "People who design products are experts cursed by their knowledge, and they can't imagine what it's like to be as ignorant as the rest of us."
To innovate, Mr. Heath says, you have to bring together people with a variety of skills. If they can't communicate clearly with one another, innovation gets bogged down in the abstract language of specialization and expertise. "It's kind of like the ugly American tourist trying to get across an idea in another country by speaking English slowly and more loudly," he says. "You've got to find the common connections."
In her 2006 book, Innovation Killer: How What We Know Limits What We Can Imagine - and What Smart Companies Are Doing About It, Cynthia Barton Rabe encourages companies to bring in outsiders called "zero-gravity thinkers" to keep creativity and innovation on track.
When experts slow down and go back to basics to bring an outsider up to speed, she told The Times, "it forces them to look at their world differently and, as a result, they come up with new solutions to old problems."
Discussion Question: How common is the 'curse of knowledge" phenomena in business organizations? Have you encountered it in your professional career? What specific steps do you take to avoid falling back on conventional solutions to problems and getting to true outside-the-box thinking? Do you think there is a need to bring in outside, so-called "zero-gravity thinkers" to stimulate outside-the-box thinking?