Why So-Called Experts So Often Get in the Way of Innovation

Uber was not conceived by a taxi company. WhatsApp did not come from a telecom provider. Airbnb was not founded by a hotel chain, and the first successful powered flight was not achieved by the best-funded scientist of his time.

That is not a coincidence.

Established experts are usually excellent at understanding, improving and defending what already exists. That is where their knowledge, experience, reputation and often their income are rooted. But for precisely that reason, they are rarely the first to question the fundamental assumptions of their industry.

The expert knows all the rules and can explain in great detail why something cannot be done. The rebel asks a different question:

Why does it still have to be done this way?

Disruptive innovation therefore often comes from people outside the established order. Not because they know nothing, but because they have not yet learned why something is supposedly impossible.

https://youtu.be/R93vtdi19m4

The Problem Is Not Expertise, but Entrenched Expertise

Knowledge is indispensable when developing new technologies, products and business models. The problem begins when knowledge turns into certainty and experience is treated as proof that the future will work more or less like the past.

So-called experts rarely recognise themselves as opponents of innovation. On the contrary, they often see themselves as realistic, responsible and professional. They point to existing regulations, technical limitations, market conditions, customer behaviour and previous failures. Their arguments sound logical because they are based on everything that has been true until that moment.

But innovation begins when someone discovers that one of those truths no longer applies.

The traditional expert asks how the existing system can be improved. The disruptive entrepreneur asks whether that system is still necessary at all.

It appears to be a small difference, but it produces completely different outcomes.

The Best-Funded Aviation Expert Lost to Two Bicycle Makers

At the end of the nineteenth century, the US War Department recognised the enormous strategic potential of powered flight. In 1898, it awarded $50,000 to the renowned scientist and Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Dr Samuel Pierpont Langley. The Smithsonian added another $20,000.

That combined investment of $70,000 would be worth approximately $2.8 million in 2026 purchasing power.

Langley had scientific recognition, institutional support, money, employees and access to the best available knowledge of his time. He had also successfully experimented with smaller unmanned models. If anyone appeared capable of achieving the first manned powered flight, it was Langley.

Yet his manned Aerodrome crashed into the Potomac immediately after its launch in October 1903. A second attempt in December ended the same way.

Nine days later, on 17 December 1903, the Wright brothers completed their first successful powered flight at Kitty Hawk.

Wilbur and Orville Wright had no scientific titles, major research institution or government subsidy. They were bicycle makers. That alone was enough for many established scientists and journalists to dismiss them.

But the brothers were not ignorant amateurs. They built their own wind tunnel, tested hundreds of wing shapes, studied birds, developed gliders and continuously adapted their designs based on what happened during real experiments. They refused to accept existing aviation knowledge without question because their own tests showed that some of the calculations used at the time were wrong.

The real difference was not that Langley possessed knowledge and the Wright brothers did not. Langley tried to build a machine from within the established scientific assumptions. The Wright brothers were willing to test those assumptions all over again.

Langley had authority. The Wright brothers had the better learning cycle.

Expertise Can Become an Intellectual Prison

The longer someone has been successful within a particular discipline, the more difficult it can become to think beyond that discipline’s assumptions. People develop a mental toolbox through which they approach every new problem. That works extremely well as long as the world does not fundamentally change.

But when technology, customer behaviour or social conditions shift, that same expertise can become a limitation.

A taxi company thinks in terms of drivers, licences, dispatch centres, taxi stands and vehicles. A hotel chain thinks about buildings, rooms, occupancy rates and locations. For years, a telecom provider thought in terms of calling minutes and separately charged text messages.

People deeply embedded in such systems mainly see all the reasons why an alternative cannot work. Someone looking in from outside may see how unnecessarily complicated the system has become.

Research into status quo bias shows that people often prefer an existing situation over change, even when rational arguments cannot fully explain that preference. Within organisations, this effect is reinforced by previous investments, established interests, hierarchy and the fear of being held responsible for an unconventional decision.

There is another mechanism at work as well. Research into the earned dogmatism effect suggests that people who see themselves as experts may also feel more entitled to think in a firm and closed-minded way. Expertise can therefore produce not only knowledge, but also the conviction that unfamiliar ideas no longer need to be seriously investigated.

The problem is not that experts know a great deal. The problem begins when everything they know prevents them from seeing what does not yet exist.

Uber Was Not Conceived by the Taxi Industry

When Garrett Camp and Travis Kalanick began discussing the idea that would later become Uber, they did not come from the traditional taxi industry. They had experience with technology, digital platforms and startups, but they had not been shaped by the rules and habits of taxi operators.

According to Uber’s own account, the original idea grew out of frustration with San Francisco’s taxi problem and the question of how technology could make it easier to request a car.

A traditional taxi operator would probably have looked first at building a better dispatch centre, improving scheduling or adding more vehicles. Camp and Kalanick looked at the smartphone and asked why a customer could not find, track and pay an available driver directly.

Initially, they probably knew less about the taxi industry than the established operators did. But that also meant they did not treat the industry’s complicated structure as an unchangeable fact.

They did not try to build a slightly better taxi company. They changed the way supply and demand were brought together.

WhatsApp Did Not Come from a Telecom Provider

The same thing happened with WhatsApp.

For years, telecom providers earned enormous amounts of money from SMS traffic. They possessed the networks, customers, technology, market knowledge and financial resources needed to develop the next generation of mobile communication.

Yet WhatsApp did not come from a telecom company. According to WhatsApp, Jan Koum and Brian Acton had spent a combined twenty years working at Yahoo. They were experienced software and infrastructure engineers, but they were not part of the established telecom system.

That meant they had no need to protect the business model built around charging people for individual messages. They could approach communication as an internet service that needed to work quickly, simply and internationally.

Once again, the innovation did not come from people without expertise. It came from experts in an adjacent field who were not financially, emotionally and intellectually trapped inside the logic of the industry they were about to transform.

We see this pattern repeatedly. Innovators usually understand enough technology to build something new, but they have not yet absorbed all the reasons why the established order believes it is impossible.

Hierarchy Determines Which Ideas Are Taken Seriously

Within organisations, ideas are rarely judged entirely on their merits. The position, reputation and status of the person proposing the idea almost always influence how it is received.

When an expensive consultant or board member presents an idea, it quickly becomes a strategic opportunity. When exactly the same idea comes from a young employee, unknown entrepreneur or outsider, it is more likely to be described as naïve, unrealistic or insufficiently developed.

This is not only about trust. It is also a way of protecting yourself.

If a manager follows the advice of a renowned consultancy and the project fails, they can show that they sought guidance from the best available experts. If that same manager backs an unconventional idea proposed by an unknown employee, they carry much more direct responsibility for the outcome.

Organisations therefore do not always choose the best idea. They often choose the idea that is easiest to defend.

A famous name can make an average idea sound credible. An unknown name can make an excellent idea appear unreliable.

That is one reason why new and unfamiliar ideas are so often rejected in favour of traditional views.

Innovation Begins When Someone Dares to Abandon the Original Assignment

Not every breakthrough comes from outside an organisation. Sometimes innovation emerges within a large company or research environment. But even then, the breakthrough often begins with someone willing to abandon the original assignment, expected application or definition of success.

3M scientist Spencer Silver was trying to develop a strong adhesive, but instead created a weak adhesive that could be used repeatedly. Judged against the original assignment, it was not a success. His colleague Art Fry later realised that the adhesive could be used to create temporary bookmarks for his hymnbook. That idea eventually became the Post-it Note.

In 1956, Wilson Greatbatch was building a device to record heart sounds when he accidentally installed a resistor with the wrong value. The circuit began emitting electrical pulses at regular intervals. Rather than merely correcting the error, Greatbatch recognised that it could provide the foundation for a practical implantable pacemaker.

The similarity is not simply that both men made a mistake. Most mistakes lead nowhere. What made these discoveries unusual was their willingness to look at an unexpected outcome differently.

A conventional expert sees that an experiment failed to produce the expected result and starts again. An innovator asks what else the unexpected result might mean.

That is why real innovation depends on experimentation, observation and the willingness to question your own assumptions as critically as you question someone else’s.

Rebels Are Not Reckless

Celebrating rebels does not mean that every wild idea is good or that knowledge, research and experience should be ignored. An entrepreneur who refuses to learn about technology, legislation, finance or customer behaviour is not innovative. They are usually simply unprepared.

The difference lies in how knowledge is used.

A genuine expert uses knowledge to ask better questions and make risks visible. A so-called expert uses knowledge to end the conversation.

The first says:

“These are the three biggest problems. How can we test or solve them?”

The second says:

“Trust me, this will never work.”

Rebels take risks, but successful rebels rarely do so blindly. They build prototypes, find customers, collect evidence and adjust their ideas. They dare to take the risk, while making sure that failure produces new information.

The Wright brothers did not keep flying because they were reckless. They reduced uncertainty with every test. WhatsApp did not succeed because its founders ignored telecom knowledge. They succeeded because they used their technical expertise to build a completely different communication model.

Rebellion without knowledge creates noise. Expertise without rebellion creates stagnation. Innovation needs both.

How Do You Stop Experts from Blocking Innovation?

Organisations that genuinely want to innovate must do more than collect ideas. They also need to examine how those ideas are evaluated.

Several principles can help.

1. Evaluate the idea before looking at the status of its creator.

   A job title, degree or famous name says little about the quality of an idea.

2. Do not only ask why something cannot be done.

   Ask which specific part cannot be done, which assumption supports that conclusion and how that assumption could be tested.

3. Invite outsiders to take part.

   People from other disciplines sometimes recognise immediately which supposed rules are really only habits.

4. Make small experiments more important than big opinions.

   If an idea can be tested cheaply and safely, the opinion of the most experienced person should not automatically be decisive.

5. Pay attention to the language used to reject ideas.

   Statements such as “our market does not work that way”, “customers do not want that” and “we tried that before” may be true, but they are also frequently used to prevent further investigation.

6. Reward people who ask intelligent questions.

   The person with the correct answer is not the only one creating value. The person who exposes an outdated assumption may be far more important.

7. Find experts who have remained curious.

   The best specialists do not need to defend their expertise constantly. They are willing to admit that circumstances have changed or that someone else has noticed something they missed.

The Greatest Threat to Innovation Is Not a Lack of Ideas

In my work with entrepreneurs and organisations, I rarely see a genuine shortage of ideas. The problem is usually that not every idea is given the same opportunity.

Some ideas are taken seriously because they come from the right person. Others are rejected because they do not fit what the established experts consider logical, responsible or achievable.

Innovation does not come from ignoring reality. It comes from investigating whether the reality on which decisions are based still exists.

That requires people who know enough to build something, but remain free enough to avoid treating existing rules as laws of nature. People who can listen to experts without automatically treating their judgement as the final answer. People who do not only ask how something can be improved, but why we still do it this way at all.

The expert knows the existing road.

The rebel sees that perhaps no road is needed.