Nassim Nicholas Taleb writes for Forbes that:
Things, it turns out, are all too often discovered by accident–but we don’t see that when we look at history in our rear-view mirrors. The technologies that run the world today (like the Internet, the computer and the laser) are not used in the way intended by those who invented them. Even academics are starting to realize that a considerable component of medical discovery comes from the fringes, where people find what they are not exactly looking for.
If random tinkering is the pathway to innovation, then we need more of it. He continues:
We need more tinkering: Uninhibited, aggressive, proud tinkering. We need to make our own luck. We can be scared and worried about the future, or we can look at it as a collection of happy surprises that lie outside the path of our imagination.
Tinkering is one approach to Leapfrogging. Creative, edgy Leapfrog organizations that lead in the New Paradigm of globalization, knowledge society and accelerating change in the 21st Century will create vibrant, visionary, hard-charging, front-running and value-creating institutions that everybody will be proud to support, work for, teach at, matriculate to, collaborate with, and donate toward. Shy of risk of failure, most academic and other educational environments are not conducive to tinkering. How might we build educational academic and educational cultures that embrace experimentation and innovation?
Comments