The Deviant’s Advantage


The Deviant’s Advantage: How to Use Fringe Ideas to Create Mass Markets
by Watts Wacker and Ryan Mathews

“Deviance is the source of all true innovation, growth, and indeed our collective survival. Deviance is defined by time, place, and circumstances.”

“Without deviance there would be no art, no scientific breakthroughs, no technological advances… Physical evolution is perhaps the perfect example of deviance in action. Without mutation—essentially deviance from an established DNA pattern—nature would remain static.”

“Don’t let the words deviant and deviance scare you. They’re being used in their purest definition—something or someone operating in a defined measure away from the norm.”

Continue reading “The Deviant’s Advantage”

Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World


Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
by David Epstein

“The response, in every field, to a ballooning library of human knowledge and an interconnected world has been to exalt increasingly narrow focus… Both training and professional incentives are aligning to accelerate specialization, creating intellectual archipelagos.”

In Range, David Epstein examines the advantages of having a range of experiences, a broader perspective, an interdisciplinary approach, and the value of flexible thinking and reasoning in a world full complexity and uncertainty where precise, deterministic solutions are unknowable.

Continue reading “Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World”