James Rogers was driving to a lab in northern California when he came face to face with a startling reality of our world: the paradox of food. Despite having a surplus of nutritious food in the world, starvation remains an issue at the forefront of public health. It’s the paradox of food. Poor distribution and the subsequent rotting of food that is never eaten takes a surplus of nutrition and turns it insufficient.
Working through the idea in his head, he finally reached a solution on how to extend the life of food. But Rogers wasn’t a specialist in nutrition or food science. He wasn’t a biologist. He wasn’t a chemist. He was a materials engineer. And his insight that is revolutionizing the way we interact with food came from an undergrad engineering class about how rust formed.
Rust forms when oxygen reacts with iron, and this ruins the material. But, by plating it with chromium, we can prevent this (this is what stainless steel is). Similarly, food goes bad when oxygen gets into it and water goes out. Why couldn’t he apply the same reasoning to food that scientists applied to rust? He did just that. Now he owns a $2 billion company.
In hindsight, this appears to be an incredibly simple innovation. And it is. But it required a connection that drives all the best creations: applying old knowledge from one domain to a new domain. This is a paradigm that any of us can apply.
For most of my high school career, I have wanted to go into public health. I always believed that my goal should be to create something that supports individuals in self-actualizing, reaching their goals. My idea of how I want to shape my brain for the world in the coming years, however, is constantly changing. It’s not because my overall purpose is radically shifting, but it’s because my idea of how to achieve it changes.
At a meeting with the founder of a mental health nonprofit, she told all the eager students ready to go support public health that public mental health needed more than psychology, public health, and counseling majors: it needed everything. Working on a student board for this organization, it became apparent why this was the case. The students with the most profound insights in discussion were not those majoring in the aforementioned fields. They were majoring in computer science, cybersecurity, and cognitive science. These were the students who thought laterally. They were interested in supporting public mental health, but they approached it from the perspective of someone who spent their time doing anything but.
The best innovations aren’t found by someone working within the field. They arise from an outsider with unique knowledge that can apply old paradigms to solve new problems — often in a more efficient way. While domain-specific knowledge is most certainly required to solve problems, it is usually not domain-specific knowledge that is lacking: it’s ideas.
David Epstein, author of Range, articulates the power of lateral thinking:
Lateral thinking is a term coined in the 1960s for the reimagining of information in new contexts, including the drawing together of seemingly disparate concepts or domains that can give old ideas new uses. By “withered technology,” Yokoi meant tech that was old enough to be extremely well understood and easily available, so it didn’t require a specialist’s knowledge. The heart of his philosophy was putting cheap, simple technology to use in ways no one else considered.
The power of lateral thinking is repurposing the old for the new; it’s using knowledge from one domain and shifting laterally to apply it to a new one. Epstein argues it is when we think laterally that we innovate: that exploration and exposure to new knowledge is a feature, not a bug, in education.
That is why I can’t settle on a major yet. I am always considering how I can maximize the number of domains I can impact. At the moment, data science looks like the way to go. But, I don’t know. And taking a page from Epstein’s book, I think I am going to explore a little before I settle down.
