Don't Listen to Experts

There is one situation in which you must at all costs, not give much weight to the opinions of ‘experts’. It’s when you want to innovate.

Experts – by definition – are people who are well versed within a field or subject matter, based on the available knowledge thus far. By the nature of their journey, they would have learned from materials that were considered ‘true’ in their field.

They get called experts when they have become familiar with the current corpus of information – which naturally would have a degree of cohesion. In other words, experts are those who are familiar and well-versed in the status quo.

Not knowing the ‘rules’ is a huge advantage when you are trying to innovate. Not abiding by established conventions is another.

When you are ignorant to what people have tried, you are more free to experiment. But wait, ‘Is it not better to strategise the explorations based on what is already tried out?’. Sure you can, but significant discoveries are rarely made like this. What you will achieve would be incremental progress to the existing status quo.

If you want to make real waves, ignore the experts.