The Making of Creative Breakthroughs
Acar, O. A. ORCID: 0000-0003-1993-0921 (2021).
The Making of Creative Breakthroughs.
California Management Review,
Abstract
Imagine your pharmaceutical company is struggling with an innovation problem related to molecular biology. Who would you go for help, a biologist who is an expert in the problem domain or a social anthropologist?
If you are like most, you will consult the biologist. And this is for a good reason; research has provided many strong arguments for why an insider like a biologist rather than an outsider like an anthropologist is more likely to solve your innovation problem. After all, insiders know the territory, which is often viewed as a necessary condition for being able to make a creative contribution to a domain.
While consulting an anthropologist for a molecular biology problem might seem far-fetched, many major breakthroughs in biology have actually originated from unexpected sources including anthropologists. This is often attributed to fresh perspectives of outsiders that might be novel for the problem domain. A case in point outside the field of biology is the Auto-Tune technology. Described as “the invention that changed music forever”, it was developed by a complete outsider to music industry, a petroleum engineer named Harold Hildebrand.
Publication Type: | Article |
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Additional Information: | This is the submitted version of an article published in California Management Review, SAGE. The published version can be read online at https://cmr.berkeley.edu/2021/09/the-making-of-creative-breakthroughs/ |
Subjects: | G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GN Anthropology H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > HD28 Management. Industrial Management H Social Sciences > HM Sociology Q Science > QH Natural history > QH301 Biology |
Departments: | Bayes Business School > Faculty of Management |
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