May 24, 2019
In this conversation Sam Arbesman and I talk about unlocking cross-disciplinary innovations, long term organizations, combinatorial creativity and much more. As you might expect from someone with Generalist Thinking as a main area of interest, Sam has out-of-the-box insights in a ton of domains and he's amazing at capturing them in tight concepts like "knowledge mining" and "jargon barriers."
By day Sam is the Scientist in Residence at Lux Capital. Don't cite me on it but I think he may be the only person with that job title in the world. In the past he's done research in complexity science and history and the two of them combined, written books, and worked in non profits.
Key Takeaways
- The concept of knowledge mining - recombining existing knowledge to create new knowledge.
- Unintuitively, Video games may secretly be some of the most powerful cross-disciplinary research labs.
- There are tactics you can use to generate cross-disciplinary creativity by cultivating a bit of randomness in your life.
Resources
Undiscovered Public Knowledge (and a 10-year update)
KongÅ Gumi - the 1400 year company
Other content from Sam:
https://fs.blog/samuel-arbesman/
https://25iq.com/2016/03/12/richard-feynman-and-charlie-munger-expert-generalists/
Topics
Favorite examples of combinations of ideas via generalists
Ref: Small world networks paper
T shaped individuals
Attempts towards systemic cross-discipline idea sharing
Don Swanson - undiscovered public knowledge
Jargon Barriers
Jefferson West Uwash - topographical map of fields
Combinatorial creativity
Systems for increasing the rewards for broad thinking vs. specialized thinking
Need to define complexity science
Computer games as a place that rewards generalist research
Meta portfolio for generalist institution
Self-sustaining insitutions and criteria for them
Reinventing selves
Or provide something people always want
Japanese construction company that lasted 1500 years
IBM original machines
The Red Queen Hypothesis wrt Organizations
Model that you need massive innovations to sustain growth (look up professor)
Does the VC funding research paradigm constrain what can exist?
Wired magazine researcher - "everyone loves the big idea that changes the world, but what about the ones that make a difference?"
The importance of different approaches to making things exist
How do you know if small ideas and tweaks in complex systems have intended effects?
Promoting randomness and optionality
What are tactics for increasing randomness and optionality?
Randomly reminding about books
Go to crazy different conferences