A short YouTube talk by Stephen Shapiro arguing that deep single-discipline expertise can hinder radical innovation. He cites two empirical studies: a Harvard Business School analysis of ~17,000 patents showing discontinuous (radical) patents were produced by people from different disciplines or multidisciplinary teams, and a 3M internal study finding higher-revenue products resulted when expertise from different domains combined or when individuals had deep expertise across multiple areas. He concludes by urging listeners to seek collaborators from other domains to spark breakthroughs.
Chapters
In the last video, I talked about expertise being the enemy of innovation. And today I want to provide a little bit of scientific evidence to back this up. There are two studies in particular which I find fascinating. The first study was done by a professor at Harvard Business School, where they looked at 17,000 patents. They looked at 17,000 patents, and what they realized is that most of those patents were derivative or adaptive. That is, they were built on some other patent. And in most of those situations, an expert did indeed solve the problem, filed a patent, it makes sense. But when they looked at the discontinuous innovations, the radical innovations, the innovations which did not build on a previous patent, in every single situation, these were solved by either somebody from a different discipline or area of expertise or from a multidisciplinary team. Multidisciplinary teams bring a greater divergent view to your problems. When everybody's cut from the same cloth, you get innovation quickly. But it just might not be that different. A similar study done at 3m looked at their employees and the products that are created and the revenue generated by those products. And what they found was that the products created not by the deep experts. So if you were an expert in adhesives and you created a new type of adhesive, that wasn't where the breakthroughs came from. The breakthroughs actually came from when an adhesives expert worked with a reflective expert, worked with somebody in a different area of expertise when the products mashed together. Or better yet, if a person, an individual, had deep expertise in multiple areas in those situations, the products that were created generated substantially greater revenues for 3M than the products created through a single product line or a single area of expertise. So remember, expertise is the enemy of innovation. Take a look at your life, your business. Where do you consider yourself to be an expert? Although this is a very good thing, start to recognize it may make it difficult for you to think differently and start asking, who? Who else might have solved a similar problem. This will help you kickstart your innovation efforts.
