The Importance of Cross-Fertilization AND WORKING IN GROUPS

A GROUP PROJECT is where the benefits of Cross-Fertilization really shine.
When several individuals from different backgrounds work together as a team they bring all their areas of specialization to the group.

Each member of the group has certain knowledge or experience in areas that others may not have. This can bring new ways of looking at a problem that was not thought of before.

Specialization / Creativity and the Expert
Every second, our nervous system is bombarded by approximately 1,000,000 bits of information. By specializing we narrow the amount of trivial information we take in. To be effective in most cases, you must narrow your area and become an expert.

In creative thinking, specialization is dangerous because we stop looking for ideas in other fields. Understanding the importance of listening to others to gain new information is important in creative problem solving.

It's also important to understand that learning new things, which may seem trivial or unimportant at the moment, can be helpful in problem solving later on.

For example, Steve Jobs took modern dance lessons in college to meet women. Years later he was working at Atari and was able to relate how much resolution of movement is needed in terms of perceiving things in certain ways for video games because of what he learned in dance class.

A real estate entrepreneur explains that he got his entreprenurial education while attending the Graduate School of Business at Stanford. He took all the regular courses relating to business as well as a drawing class. In the drawing class he learned that 'All art is a series of recoveries from the first line. The hardest thing to do is to put down the first line.'
He realized the same is true in business. You must act to get results.
A lot of business schools analyze things to death and never get around to acting or actually starting the idea.

What seems frivolous at the time will usually pay off later!

Cross-Fertilization
Often, the best ideas come from cutting across disciplinary boundaries and looking into other fields for new ideas.

How about Governor Arnold Schwartzenagar, ex-muscleman/actor?
Do you think his former career has been a help or hinderence in his new profession?

Nothing will make a field stagnate more quickly than keeping out foreign ideas. In science, most advances come when a person is forced to change fields.

Specialization is a fact of life.
In order to function in the world, you have to narrow your focus and limit your field of view. When you're trying to generate new ideas, however, specialization can limit you so you need to look outside your own familiar arena. The more divergent your sources, the more original the idea you create is likely to be.

World War I military designers borrowed from the cubist art of Picasso and Braque to create more efficient camouflage patterns for tanks and guns.

Roll-on deodorant was an adaption of the ball point pen.

Drive-in banks were adapted from drive-in restaurants.

Where do you explore for ideas?