Thursday, November 14, 2013

A.A. Milne talks the value of strategic sloppiness

In a recent discussion with Paul Schoemaker, he mentioned the value of "strategic sloppiness" - in other words, not being too perfect; allowing some disorder to come into your work to allow collisions that may generate new solutions. The epitome of this approach is Alexander Fleming's unclean lab that spawned the discovery of penicillin.

Then I stumbled across this quote from Winnie-the-Pooh author A.A. Milne that sums up the value of strategic sloppiness. It is quoted in the new book Talent Wants To Be Free by Orly Lobel:

One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.

No comments:

Post a Comment