Innovators succeed by questioning expert certainty and testing ideas empirically. Copernicus challenged the geocentric model, and Marconi sent radio across the Atlantic despite physicists saying it was impossible. The ionosphere, unknown then, reflected the signal. Experts rationalize anything, but breakthroughs come from trial and error.
Chapters
And we do it all the time. We go in to see a new client, in a new situation, we assume that it's like something else we've seen before. Mark Twain said this. He said, it's not what we don't know that gets us into trouble. It's what we think we know for sure. The things we think— but the things we're certain of are the most dangerous things. The things we don't know, we can ask about. The things we're sure of, we don't ask about, because we're certain of them. That's right. And sometimes they're just downright wrong. In the Middle Ages, the study of astronomy was defined as the study of how the heavenly bodies moved around the Earth. There's an assumption in there, isn't there? And it wasn't until Copernicus came along and said, what would happen if we put the Sun at the center of the solar system? He was able to explain all the motions of the planets much better. Marconi was an Italian radio pioneer. He came to Britain to test his theory it was possible to send radio waves across the Atlantic. The experts scoffed at him, the physicists. Do we have any physicists in the room? Yes. Oh, good. I like to pick on physicists. The physicists said, let's look at the facts. We know the Earth's a giant sphere. We know radio waves travel in straight lines. What's going to happen when you send a straight line off the edge of a sphere? It's going to go tangentially into space. You'll never hear from it again. Marconi said, "I'm gonna try anyway." He set up his transmitter in Cornwall. He set up his receiver in Newfoundland, and guess what? The signal was received. Why? Well, unknown to the experts, unknown to Marconi as well, there's a charge layer around the Earth called the ionosphere, which reflected the signal. And and very often the experts can give you all the reasons why something won't work, and it will, or all the reasons why something will work, and it won't. And that's why great innovators, great inventors, great lateral thinkers don't trust experts. They don't trust theory. They trust experimentation. They trust trial and error. They trust getting out there. They trust empirical results.
