Spend a portion of your time interacting with and learning from people who aren’t in your industry or in your profession but are connected in some ways to what you do. How many of us do this today?

Stephen Shapiro, while advocating this, gives the analogy of people from the gas pipeline industry working together and learning from cardiologists on how blood coagulates and applying this knowledge to their own field. He calls this purposeful tangents. In our own fields, we should find and nurture Purposeful tangents.

Watch Stephen Shapiro’s short video in the link below

https://vimeo.com/179806230

It is the ability to see and make connections across domains of knowledge which helps drive a critical part of innovation success. Stephen says focusing too much on your area of expertise only leads to incremental improvements but purposeful tangents can lead to breakthrough thinking. Absolutely agree.