Absorbing Good Ideas ain't Easy
It’s easy to curse and lament the fact that new ideas don’t get accepted easily. Sure, the reason is vested interest and factionalism at times. But often, there’s a very far less malicious reason for it: inertia, as Seth Godin wrote : “We stick with what we know, with what feels safe, with the status quo… (After all) the status quo is the status quo precisely because it’s good at sticking around.” Also, as venture capitalist Paul Graham wrote , there’s the inevitable asymmetry between new v/s established ideas: “When a new idea first emerges, it usually seems pretty feeble. It's a mere hatchling. Received wisdom is a full-grown eagle by comparison.” So how do we learn to recognize new ideas worth pursuing? For one thing, Graham says we should give weightage to who is proposing it: “Most implausible-sounding ideas are in fact bad and could be safely dismissed. But not when they're proposed by reasonable domain experts. If the person proposing the idea is re...