Usability Views Article Details  home | timeline | recent | popular | e-reports | userati | books | about  Why smart people defend bad ideas (06 Apr 2005) If you want your smart people to be as smart as possible, seek a diversity of ideas. Find people with different experiences, opinions, backgrounds, weights, heights, races, facial hair styles, colors, past-times, favorite items of clothing, philosophies, and beliefs. Unify them around the results you want, not the means or approaches they are expected to use. It’s the only way to guarantee that the best ideas from your smartest people will be received openly by the people around them. On your own, avoid homogenous books, films, music, food, sex, media and people. Actually experience life by going to places you don’t usually go, spending time with people you don’t usually spend time with. Be in the moment and be open to it. Until recently in human history, life was much less predictable and we were forced to encounter things not always of our own choosing. We are capable of more interesting and creative lives than our modern cultures often provide for us. If you go out of you way to find diverse experiences it will become impossible for you to miss ideas simply because your homogenous outlook filtered them out. Article URL: http://www.scottberkun.com/essays/essay40.htm Read 46 more articles from Scott Berkun sorted by date, popularity, or title. Next Article: The cranky user: Bad design can be so taxing     This site is a labour of love built by Chris McEvoy