The Power of Ignorance

If desperation is the mother of innovation, then ignorance might be its father. In the early stages of a company, being protected from external influences can be a powerful stimulant for creativity and innovation. Why? For the same reason that we often see some of the most creative and entrepreneurial insights coming from younger people. Wisdom and experience help to grow and sustain a company, but generating novel ideas requires a certain amount of naïveté. In the context of entrepreneurship and idea generation, ignorance equals open-mindedness. An empty mind is an open one — it is empty of bias, empty of past experience, and empty of external critique.

Being unencumbered by external opinions allows two critical entrepreneurial traits to thrive: creativity and conviction. The former is most important during the early think-big stages of a company, and the latter is vital to mobilizing the team to execute with excellence.

Better idea generation

There are two types of successful entrepreneurs — those who are aware of limitations and embrace constraints, becoming more creative as a result, and those who are unaware of their constraints and external realities, and therefore generate ideas freely. Those in the latter camp are especially capable of developing a fanatical passion for their ideas. If you can you free your mind from constraints and external opinions, new ideas will flow faster and you become more bold in your actions. Leading idea generation with unbridled optimism is what provides the chance for new thinking. (For more of my thoughts on this, see one of my prior blogs on leading with optimism.)

Better execution through conviction

A large part of successful execution is rational prioritization and careful planning. But the spirit of excellence in execution gets its energy from conviction. Rallying people behind the idea requires a resolute belief in one's vision. This conviction is obviously easier when you don't know the thousands of ways an idea could crash and burn. You don't lose sleep over something of which you are unaware. Ignorance promotes a fearless conviction that inspires and motivates the team members who are driving execution. Entrepreneurs know that they go into situations with the statistical odds stacked against them, but rationality is overwhelmed by conviction in the possibility of succeeding. Conviction is highly infectious, and people who catch it can and will execute with a greater intensity and sense of purpose in their roles.

Embracing one's ignorance does not suggest that one should remain ignorant forever. The key is recognizing the critical moments in a company's trajectory when the a clean-sheet approach is a net positive. At the conceptualization phase and certain growth inflection points, the right kind of ignorance is beneficial.