Not long ago, I was talking with a brilliant engineer about the challenges that engineers have in coming up with creative ideas. No, not all, and this certainly isn't meant to offend, in fact we have many engineers in our think tank that are the absolute exemption to that rule. Now then, my engineering acquaintance noted that he believed that;
"Creative thinking people need to continue moving to different positions and areas because in the first couple of years (more or less based on how difficult the areas is) a person will give all the new fresh insight and their mind and in their previous experience to an area and then basically that person ends up placing themselves into a box of their own making. This reduces a person's effectiveness the more time they are in the same field."
Wow, that was a bold statement but think about, he's absolutely correct, and yes, another way of visualizing the same stated problem and a viable solution. I sometimes wish Google X would try to re-arrange their search engine - a secondary system for cross pollination. Twitter should be used for people with ideas to post them to the world, fully searchable, not stupid messages or BS party line gotchas. The Internet needs an upgrade for human forward progress.
"Does this once again bring us back to stagnation vs growth?" he rhetorically asks, adding that "Maybe all thinkers should be constantly moving around to different areas, while doers who are non-thinking should be in that same area doing the ideas brought forth by the thinkers. I am sure a graph could be created depicting the bell curve of time vs effectiveness of a creative mind in any given field."
Ah, now we are getting somewhere, do you see where he's going with this, have you considered this, he's right isn't he? Sure he is, but I think that the graph is also not static, the charted line moves with culture, domain, money flows, nations, etc. One paper I read stated that any more than 2-years in an upper-end college was of detriment to the "eminent achiever creative genius" as Dean Simonton professor and expert in the subject calls them. And there are lots of examples; Dell, Gates, Jobs, etc., and other problem is boredom, people stop thinking once they learn something, stop asking questions.
An interesting book to read is; "The First 20-hours" by Josh Kaufman (I highly recommend this book - CYA I was sent an advanced copy by the publisher to read), where he empirically shows that the fast uptake, interests, questions occur at super-fast rates in the very beginning. Once someone masters something and becomes in the top 1%, that could take 10,000 hours, then they often find a breakthrough too. So, maybe there is a gap in the middle, and maybe someone with fluidity of the mind can maintain the innovative thought process the whole time, through; passion for the domain or endeavor.
What I mean to say is that maybe we need to turn that Bell Curve on its head and watch for the trap in the gulley! That's why you need a think tank, to bridge the gap. Now then consider the "Inflection Points" of a Bell Curve to maintain innovation? What if you bridge the gap with additional "channels" or frequencies, then you get all sorts of humps in your inverted Bell Curve inverse, and you play that, just as you would investing in Inverse ETF's using a derivative algorithm? Please consider all this and think on it.
https://ezinearticles.com/?Creativity-of-Engineers-and-Eminent-Achievers&id=8452456
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