Kids build great things.

Or, you know, ask the same thing to a bunch of traditionally-educated children and you'll get the same answer: a black dot.

Montessori kids have been rewarded over the years for giving out-of-the-box answers and that's probably what their mind jumps to first. Their ignorance isn't what gives them the creative answers - the years of being taught to look for something different is.

If you want to start getting better answers out of your employees/coworkers/own mind figure out how to reward them for random ideas instead of pounding them down.

A lot of creativity is stemmed from asking is the right questions. Children, as a result of their lack of knowledge, make connections with the few things they do know and thus interpret questions in ways that adults might not think of. Their unique associations may come simply from the lack/disregard of common knowledge.

Ignorance definitely can be bliss. I think there needs to be healthy disregard for the impossible; it's what makes you do things that others normally would not dare to do or even think about. Most innovations come from either disregarding what they already know or not knowing better.

I'd like to differentiate two thoughts that this post points to: the "effectiveness of randomized search" and "ignorance is bliss", as they are pointing to different types of creativity, I think.

The second case is one where the common wisdom is wrong or the conditions that made it right are no longer true. This is where courage is more important than creativity, other people have also come up with similar ideas but either thought it was impossible or didn't push it far enough. Entrepreneurial examples abound but this happens in science, too, e.g. see Poisson's Dot (Poisson predicted it but thought it was impossible, so was discovered by someone else), the discovery of Neptune, etc. This sort of ignorance/naivete/gonzo attitude generally fuels startups. Of course, when the common wisdom is correct, then the startup fails, so there's some evidence bias here, too.

Now, the second one is more interesting. Let me tell you a story I read some time ago:

The hunters for a certain village were much better than their neighbors in bunting bison. This was due to the fact that their shaman each year gave them a map drawn on a piece of hide that predicted where the bison would be, and it would generally be right. One year, a hunter sneaked into the shaman's tent to see how he created these accurate maps. He say that that the shaman just treated the hide and did nothing else. When he asked him about it, the shaman said: "When I treat the hide, lines appear on the hide, guided by the Gods, that predict where the bison will be". These random lines were the secret of the hunters' success.

That sort of random search of the idea space is hard to do but can work wonders when it works.

"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."

  -- Clarke's first law.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarkes_three_laws

So true: 1. Some of the greatest inventions were found out by mistake. 2. If you don't take risks, you will never know what is possible. 3. If you always follow the rules, you constrain your domain to what is already discovered and understood.

This is related to the oft-heard saying, "No one told me it was impossible, so I did it."

The chalk dot on the wall story comes directly from a 1983 book called "A Whack on the Side of the Head: How You Can Be More Creative" by Roger VonOech. A proper credit or footnote would be nice.

I like the author on a personal level. This was a great post that's really deep despite its brevity and simplicity. I remember he posted something on HN a few months ago about Gumroad - something about the problems involved in launching or something if I reme,bet right. I'm impressed that this young guy is doing do much. We can all learn from people like this. I'm just a few years older and I envy him. He seems like an old soul and I'm so impressed with how much he's accomplished. I know it's off topic but I was so impressed I had to say this.