What Ideas Must Die To Achieve Progress?
Max Planck, the influential German physicist and Nobel Prize Winner in Physics,
once said, “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents but
rather because its opponents eventually die.”
A brilliant mind, yes. But I wouldn’t say he was the most uplifting individual with
this statement.
Still, it got me thinking about the kind of ideas in science that must die in order for
us to experience true progress. It’s what attracted me to the book based on Planck’s
quote called, “This Idea Must Die: Scientific Theories That Are Blocking Progress.”
This book speaks to 175 leading scientists in the areas of human behavior, artificial
intelligence, economics, even the concept of race and the origins of the universe.
Regardless of where you land on these issues, you can’t help but change your
assumptions and open your mind a bit based on these various observations.
At times, we see this concept play out in the academic space among those who
become full-time professors. If they have certain views, by the time those views are
very much in need of evolving, it’s very difficult to convince some professors that
they are indeed wrong. It’s also difficult to persuade some of them to learn new
ideas.
Mind you, it’s not that they think the new ideas are wrong.
It’s that they are at a point where they may not wish to learn those new ideas at all.
Therefore, since there are a limited number of academic chairs, the only way to
progress in that situation is for the person who occupies that academic chair to
move on.
What About Technologies? Which Ones Have To Die?
In order for a new type of technology to take shape, is our pace of technological
change where it should be in terms of killing those old technologies and are we
replacing them with new ones fast enough?
My position is that there is no good economic model today that describes how
technology is propagated. It is understood that a lot of the way that technology
propagates has to do with a greater picture how the technology is deployed.
For example, when electricity was introduced, it didn't become a product on the
factory floor – not until we got to the point where factories built for steam engines
became old. Because the factories built for steam were vertical. It took thirty years
to get to the point where electrical motors were reliable enough, cheap enough and
powerful enough for people running those factories to essentially say, “OK, I feel
comfortable redesigning my whole factory around this.”
Today, some technologies have proliferated extremely fast. Cell phones are a great
example of this. It's hard to remember that the modern smartphone was only
introduced in 2007 and at that time, its capabilities were rather limited. Fast
forward to today and smartphone technology is the most popular in the world.
What happened? A combination of:
1) Speed with which the technology performs much better and
2) The cost of installing it in the first place
For example, if it costs millions of dollars to construct a building, that building
doesn't get obsolete very fast, right? So in order for a new technology for developing
buildings to arise, it's going to take a fair amount of time to deploy. You need to
advertise the assets of the new technology to the point of where developers can say,
“Even though this building isn’t terribly old, I can still get my money's worth by
knocking it down and building anew.”
My thoughts on that is that a proper model will account for these multiple layers
where for technology to propagate, if it's disposable technology, it will propagate
much faster than if it's designed for a 50-year lifecycle.
Take phones, for example. Technically, when rotary phones were designed, they
were designed to last 30 years or more. But each phone was cheap, so replacing
them and getting more use was relatively straightforward. People didn't really
agonize over spending another $50 to get a phone replaced (and then a push button
phone, followed by cordless phone, etc.).
The technology performed better at a faster rate and the cost to install/replace was
more palatable.
What Parts Of Your Skill Set Need To Evolve?
I won’t say what parts “need to die,” because those skills remain with you and don’t
technically die – however, in looking at your resume, are there some branches on
the tree that would benefit from having new ones spring forth? Let’s go back to our
combination for rapid change: What skills do you see that are in demand at a faster
rate and what is the “cost” in terms of investment of time and finance to adopt those
new skills?
Before you assume everything old is “dead” and that you might need to start from
scratch, pay attention to how that skill set is changing, shifting and updating. This is
a bit like the building we were talking about – but in this case, you don’t need to
knock down the building as much as understand how to modernize it for the
present.
Case in point: I had lunch recently with a gentleman who's one of the better
technologists in this country and we were talking about the programming language,
C++. He was explaining how, while C++ had been around for a very long time, it
doesn't stay still. It's continually improved upon and enhanced, from C++ to C++11 to
C++14. It a moving, ever evolving target.
Here, for certain candidates, what needs to die is the thinking that newer versions of
this programming language aren’t worth learning.
Consider this as it applies to your own career path - what line of thinking is holding
you back? Does that thinking need to die in order for you to learn something new?
As new technologies that apply to your career are invented, there will be a process
required of learning about it, then understanding where it’s applicable, then
convincing others that it is useful and then demonstrating its effectiveness.
If it sounds like quite the commitment, well, it can be. But it’s less daunting when
you have the guidance of a partner like Roy Talman & Associates who understands
what companies in the field are requiring so you know which parts of your career
plan need to die so that others can grow and flourish faster.
We can live with that. Can you?