The Curse of Knowledge

Does your development team:

• Have similar types of software and hardware expertise?
• Know your product better than most of your customers?
• Wonder why the rest of the company “doesn’t get it”?

If so, your team’s high levels of skill may just get in the way of great innovations.  It’s called “the Curse of Knowledge.”

Check out this article in the New York Times called “Innovative Minds Don’t Think Alike", and then consider about your development team.  According to Dan and Chip Heath, authors of a very enjoyable book called “Make to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Other’s Die”, the curse of knowledge is why engineers design products that only other engineers can use. (Otherwise known as why the remote control has 52 buttons.)

According to the article, Chip Heath says:

You have to bring together people with a variety of skills. If those people can’t communicate clearly with one another, innovation gets bogged down in the abstract language of specialization and expertise. “It’s kind of like the ugly American tourist trying to get across an idea in another country by speaking English slowly and more loudly,” he says. “You’ve got to find the common connections.”

In “Innovation Killer: How What We Know Limits What We Can Imagine – and What Smart Companies Are Doing About It,” Cynthia Barton Rabe describes what she calls “zero gravity thinkers” who are corporate outsiders, smart and skilled but with non-identical skills.  She says they are very useful at keeping creativity and innovation on track by looking at the problem and opportunity from new angles.

“Look for people with renaissance-thinker tendencies, who’ve done work in a related area but not in your specific field,” she says. “Make it possible for someone who doesn’t report directly to that area to come in and say the emperor has no clothes.”

For me, this article highlights the value of the Persona within an organization.  Maybe the Persona is a renaissance idea.  A solid Persona will certainly show whether or not the emperor has clothes and will then provide a clear language for communication.  While you may need a "zero gravity thinker" to help you develop your Persona, it can save you from the curse.