Paul Graham: Great new things often come from the margins

From Anunnaki

About two blocks from my office, Steve Jobs takes the stage today at the Worldwide Developers Conference, touting innovation.  Jobs is on an incredible run right now, reviving a company that was left for dead just 6-7 years ago.  It's amazing to remember that 30 years ago, two Steves huddle in a Palo Alto garage to hack together some parts they bought from Frye's electronics store.  Steve Jobs and the other Steve (Wozniak) co-founded Apple Computer in 1976.  Wozniak was the geek of the pair, creating the Apple I and Apple II computers in the mid-1970s, then fading back in the technology margins.

A few months ago, one of fav business/software bloggers (Paul Graham) had a sensenational post up, which draws in part from the early days of Apple and talks at length about innovation.  Graham captures the tension between those on the inside and those on the magins, distilling his POV in what might be seen as the battle cry for all those on the outside hacking away:

So that, I think, should be the highest goal for the marginal.  Be inappropriate.  When you hear people saying that, you're golden. And they, incidentally, are busted.

I've spent most of my life as an mega-insider - it is something that draws me like a magnet.  Over the last 10 years, I've felt myself connecting most of the time with voices on the margins, outsiders who are hacking together ideas and discards into brilliant things that reshape the head & the heart.  No matter if the context is church or work or music, I find myself moving as hard as I can to the margins, drawn by a power and a hope that I can not explain.

That's the paradox I want to explore: great new things often come from the margins, and yet the people who discover them are looked down on by everyone, including themselves.

From serafini

One reason so many good ideas come from the margin is simply that there's so much of it. There have to be more outsiders than insiders, if insider means anything.  If the number of outsiders is huge it will always seem as if a lot of ideas come from them, even if few do per capita.  But I think there's more going on than this.  There are real disadvantages to being an insider, and in some kinds of work they can outweigh the advantages.

The eminent, on the other hand, are weighed down by their eminence. Eminence is like a suit: it impresses the wrong people, and it constrains the wearer.

Outsiders should realize the advantage they have here.  Being able to take risks is hugely valuable.  Everyone values safety too much, both the obscure and the eminent.  No one wants to look like a fool. But it's very useful to be able to.  If most of your ideas aren't stupid, you're probably being too conservative.  You're not bracketing the problem.

The very skill of insiders can be a weakness.  Once someone is good at something, they tend to spend all their time doing that.  This kind of focus is very valuable, actually.  Much of the skill of experts is the ability to ignore false trails.  But focus has drawbacks: you don't learn from other fields, and when a new approach arrives, you may be the last to notice.

For outsiders this translates into two ways to win.  One is to work on a variety of things.  Since you can't derive as much benefit (yet) from a narrow focus, you may as well cast a wider net and derive what benefit you can from similarities between fields.  Just as you can compete with delegation by working on larger vertical slices, you can compete with specialization by working on larger horizontal slices-- by both writing and illustrating your book, for example.

The second way to compete with focus is to see what focus overlooks. In particular, new things.  So if you're not good at anything yet, consider working on something so new that no one else is either. It won't have any prestige yet, if no one is good at it, but you'll have it all to yourself.

From caterina

If I had to condense the power of the marginal into one sentence it would be: just try hacking something together.  That phrase draws in most threads I've mentioned here.   Hacking something together means deciding what to do as you're doing it, not a subordinate executing the vision of his boss.  It implies the result won't be pretty, because it will be made quickly out of inadequate materials.  It may work, but it won't be the sort of thing the eminent would want to put their name on.  Something hacked together means something that barely solves the problem, or maybe doesn't solve the problem at all, but another you discovered en route.  But that's ok, because the main value that initial version is not the thing itself, but what it leads to.  Insiders who daren't walk through the mud in their nice clothes will never make it to the solid ground on the other side.

Comments

[Keith Seckel]

I remember hearing a statistic once re: how most companies start dying when they stop risking. Apple is certainly "The Man" now -- is as "establishment" as other major companies -- and yet they are not, in this sense: they continue to innovate and push margins.

And I may be wrong about this, but my sense is they push these margins not for profit, but for fun; because it is just what they do. Profit is nice, sure -- but it is secondary.

I want to be on the outside too.

Thanks for these great challenging thoughts!

~ Keith