What Einstein proved, Arthur Clarke formulated and Vinod Khosla reminded - this is important for the success of your Innovation initiative

The real tragedy occurs each time a creative mind turns away from a challenge because enough experts tell them it’s unsolvable - Vinod Khosla, Black Swans of Energy Transformation

http://www.khoslaventures.com/wp-content/uploads/Black_Swan_8_28_11.pdf

#Vinod Khosla has written an insightful essay on the Black Swans of energy transformation where he emphaises the importance of placing our bets on the less probable, high risk technologies that if they succeed can lead to a breakthrough improvement. Khosla makes an important point about why we should not get discouraged by what experts say if we want to make any progress with our innovation idea.

"The number of times prominent experts have claimed that there is no possible innovation left in a market, an area or even all of science, is hard to count.



In 1900 Lord Kelvin, having just retired as president of the Royal Society, was reported to have said, "There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement."

 Meanwhile they had started to shut down patent offices all over Europe. As John D. Barrow describes in his book, New Theories of Everything, “Near the end of the last century, many also felt the work of science to be all but done. The Prussian patent office was closed down in the belief that there were no more inventions to be made.

But some work carried out by a junior at another patent office in Berne changed all that and opened up all the vistas of twentieth-century physics.”


To understand the four ground-breaking papers that #Einstein published in 1905, see the TED video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91XI7M9l3no (a brilliant explanation).

In fact, Arthur Clarke has formulated this fact in the form of three laws - Arthur Clarke's Three Laws

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws

Clarke's first law

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

Clarke's second law

The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

Clarke's third law

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

If you have been inviting experts for your brainstorming sessions so far, then you may want to reconsider that. If you want to be successful in innovation, don't aim to become an expert, don't listen to experts - always think like a beginner.