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Key Takeaways Expertise narrows perception; innovation expands when you invite unfamiliar voices into the conversation.
Breakthroughs happen when outsiders spot anomalies that insiders have trained themselves to overlook.
Entrepreneurs are obsessed with expertise. We hire it, chase it and put it on pedestals. We fill our meetings with specialists, craft job descriptions that read like encyclopedia entries and tell ourselves that the more knowledge we surround ourselves with, the faster we’ll find breakthrough ideas.
But expertise has a paradox built into it. The deeper you go into a specialty, the narrower your field of vision becomes. You learn the rules, then become encased in them. You absorb the norms and eventually stop questioning them. You become fluent in the language of your industry. And in that fluency, you lose the ability to hear anything outside of it.
Innovation rarely comes from the center of an industry. It comes from the edges. From the people who don’t know the rules well enough to be constrained by them. And yet, these are the voices entrepreneurs most often ignore.
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Why we miss the clues right in front of us
Decades ago, two cardiologists had a problem they didn’t even realize was a problem. They had waiting-room chairs that kept wearing out in a strange, oddly specific way. The front edges of the seats frayed faster than they should have. The doctors replaced them repeatedly, chalking it up to cheap materials or heavy use.
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