Sitting at the creative end of things, understanding conventional wisdom is important and having strategies to free oneself from the thinking is vital.

What Is Conventional Wisdom/knowledge?

It is a body of thought and beliefs that are generally accepted to be true. These could be generally accepted ideas, expert opinions or herd mentality etc. It is ingrained in our minds – there are just two modes, as Mel Robbins. These are either auto-pilot or panic mode. Both of these reverts back to conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom is not all bad, but it proves to be detrimental when it becomes the status quo.

Just because something is generally accepted – it need not be true.

First Things First – How To Identify It?

How often have you said or heard these “Get in line with other”, “In my expert opinion”, “The whole lot of us believe …”, “Sticking with what works” etc. Conventional wisdom has been the norm since time immemorial. It camouflages into terms like the ones above. In this blog, we explore why these won’t work.

First Things First – How To Identify It?

In a world where we praise democracies, conventional wisdom looks at taking a crack on the majority. There are multiple reasons why one needs to question this status quo. Here are a few examples when conventional wisdom failed us.

• The majority believed that the Earth was flat until the myth debunked.
• The major leagues' baseball teams had kept radio broadcast away from 1921 till 1935. They feared that people might not turn up the games when they listen to it at the comfort of their homes, which would affect the revenues. When they did adapt to radio broadcasts, the more number of people started showing up to the games.
• Everyone believed Samuel Langley would invent the aeroplane. He had more resources, attention and funding, but it was the Wright Brothers who invented the plane.
• Everyone believed Samuel Langley would invent the aeroplane. He had more resources, attention and funding, but it was the Wright Brothers who invented the plane.

Any new app, design, inventions, discovery, approach and methodology started with questioning what existed - It started with questions which challenged the conventional wisdom.

Where Does Conventional Wisdom Go Wrong?

• Many a time, history proves that expert opinions are affected with inherent biases.
• As the subject matter starts getting narrow, there is a tendency of group thinking that plagues the experts - often one expert might follow another. It affects both hard and soft sciences.

How To Break Away From Conventional Wisdom?

Do you know why even though the mighty elephants are tied with a single chain and a weak anchor never break-free? When the elephant was a baby, it would have tried unsuccessfully. Now the elephant assumes it cannot do anything about the chain. The elephant suffers from 'Learned helplessness' and mindset often plagues humans as well.

• Always remember to learn the rules. Then learn to break them – perhaps like an order within chaos.
• When you are dealing with different scenarios, explore various possibilities of ‘What If?’ – engage your mind, and break the patterns
• If your employee has a different thought process or approach, engage with them. These interactions often have unique perspectives that can prove useful.
• ‘Known Devil is better than an unknown angel’ is a concept that has been keeping people from taking risks. Analyse if you/your team is in the comfort zone. Explore to make the difference.

Breaking away from the norm is the first step to be innovative. These are roads less travelled and has a lot of chaos since it moved away from the norm. At the same time, these are pillars of better tomorrow. The curiosity, the urge to make sense of the reality often leads to new paths away from conventional wisdom.