We’d spent the week in the special weirdness that is Las Vegas at the National Association of Broadcasters annual tradeshow and jamboree, something I’ve been attending for over 20 years. Over the years I’ve worked with many of the people in the industry. I’ve learnt the specialist language and know my H.264 from my 1080p and my VANC from my OpenEXR. That level of experience, that deep immersion in an industry, is hard won and gives you a particular perspective.
Like the view from the bottom of the Grand Canyon, it took a lot of effort and time to acquire this perspective and only a few people (ok, a few hundreds of thousands in the case of the case of the film & TV world) gain it.
But, it is a very particular perspective, and once attained it can then be difficult to imagine other perspectives, or even that they might exist.
Standing deep in the canyon the walls looked absolutely insurmountable, it was easy to believe that no one could ever make it down on foot. I’ve not seen the canyon from the perspective of standing against its walls, halfway down and if I didn’t know that there were paths, and that people regularly take donkey rides down them, I might never have even thought that perspective was attainable.
In business we tend to value the perspective of technical knowledge and experience, we tend to undervalue alternative perspectives. That is a shame because one is not better than the other, just different. If I was rafting down the Colorado, I’d sure want that close up experienced view of the river, but can recognise that another perspective could warn me of unexpected dangers ahead.
What we tend to lose in acquiring that specialist knowledge is the ability to challenge it and the status quo. We lose the simple ability to ask childish questions. We tend to accept answers, and the “way things are” as insurmountable as the walls of the canyon. Sadly, it is those challenging questions that lead to innovation and disruption. So those that are unable to ask them are as doomed as the dinosaurs.
| Experience | Naivety |
| Understand the terminology and detail | Gloss over the details that they don’t understand |
| Anticipate barriers to adoption and the classic “we’ve tried that before” | Runs straight at the barriers because they don’t see them (and maybe they don’t exist). |
| Understanding how things got to this level of weirdness “that’s just the way it is” | “That’s dumb” – see that there must be a better way to do things |
| Knowing almost everyone and being able to contact them | Seeks out the best talent they can and often from outside the industry |
| Know how we got here | Know where we could be going |
It’s not all good of course, you need both, and you need to be careful. Remember what happened to Trin Tragula’s wife? She told him he needed “to have a sense of perspective”, so he invented the Total Perspective Vortex to annoy her. When she experienced it, the shock of seeing herself in relation to the rest of the universe instantly annihilated her brain. Trin Tragula had discovered that the one thing that a person cannot afford to have in a universe this size is a sense of perspective.
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