THE PRINCIPLE

People who don’t know what they don’t know sometimes know more than the people who know only what they know

When you know a lot about a topic, you may automatically block ideas that don’t fit into the accepted rules about that field.

That’s why so many breakthroughs in a particular discipline come from people who approach it from a different angle. It’s also why Walt Disney’s Imagineering Blue Sky programme hires young interns to spend the summer coming up with new ideas for attractions for the Disney theme parks.

Stanford University engineering professor Robert I. Sutton described it to the Los Angeles Times as bringing together ‘people who know too much and people who know too little’.

When you want fresh ideas, here are some types of people you might consult:

• children
• the elderly
• people from a different culture (e.g. tourists from countries other than your own)
• people who work in a field totally different from your own.

The most important thing: don’t dismiss their ideas as unworkable just because they’ve never been done before – that’s exactly why they could be valuable. You will then bring your experience and knowledge to bear as well; and the combination of the two may be exactly what’s needed for a breakthrough.