Lesson 4. Beware the “Expert”

Ask Peter what an expert is, and he’ll tell you, “An expert is somebody who tells you exactly why something can not be done.” During these Exponential times, this has never been more true. History has shown that the best inventions or solutions rarely come from existing experts in the field; they almost always come from outsiders. It wasn’t the horse-and-buggy producers who created the car. The icebox providers didn’t create the refrigerator. Almost all innovation has come from thinkers who aren’t domain experts, who bring a fresh perspective and don’t know what can’t be accomplished.

When Kaggle runs a competition, the first responders are typically experts in a particular domain who say, “We know this industry, we’ve done this before, and we’ll figure it out.” And just as inevitably, within two weeks, complete newcomers to the field trounce the experts’ best results. Kaggle has run more than 200 such competitions. Incredibly, the winner has never come from the same industry as the data. 

So, if experts are suspect, to whom should we turn instead? As we’ve already noted, everything is measurable. And the newest profession making those measurements is the data scientist. Andrew McAfee calls this new breed of data experts “geeks.” He also sees the HiPPO, or “highest paid person’s opinion,” as the natural enemy of geeks. That’s because HiPPOs still base their opinions largely on intuition. We don’t believe that this is a contest that should be won completely by one side or the other. Instead, we think that when it comes to ExOs, both groups will co-exist—but with a proviso: the role of HiPPOs (or experts) will change. They will continue to be the best people to ask questions and identify key challenges, but the geeks will then mine the data to provide the solutions.