Innovation and the “Curse of Knowledge”

Over the Christmas holidays, the NY Times ran an interesting story that talked about experts and innovation – especially the paradox that more experts can produce less innovation. The results of the following experiment may provide a clue, and offer a useful reminder to our industry as a whole as it attempts to communicate with the broader public:

“Elizabeth Newton, a psychologist, conducted an experiment on the curse of knowledge while working on her doctorate at Stanford in 1990. She gave one set of people, called “tappers,” a list of commonly known songs from which to choose. Their task was to rap their knuckles on a tabletop to the rhythm of the chosen tune as they thought about it in their heads. A second set of people, called “listeners,” were asked to name the songs.

Before the experiment began, the tappers were asked how often they believed that the listeners would name the songs correctly. On average, tappers expected listeners to get it right about half the time. In the end, however, listeners guessed only 3 of 120 songs tapped out, or 2.5 percent. The tappers were astounded. The song was so clear in their minds; how could the listeners not “hear” it in their taps?”