Unlocking Innovation: The Power of Reading Across Disciplines

Bringing knowledge from distant disciplines

We can only make incremental additions to the existing knowledge.?When?done in a smart way, that added value becomes innovation.

To add value, the key point is to make a new idea first?relatable, then?applicable,?and finally?expansive.

There is a higher probability that somebody in your field or in an adjacent field has already looked into the incremental value you are researching.

However, if you discover a touch-point within a distant discipline and succeed in bringing back your learning, there is a higher chance that you’d say something new.

For years, I was hesitant to connect seemingly unrelated subjects because my early education taught me that was not the way to do things.

I kept doing it.

I was lucky enough to realize that mixing and matching seemingly unrelated subjects was a great way to drive creativity and innovation.

Expanding to the teachings of “other” fields

When I was working on my Ph.D. in my early to mid-thirties, I found myself at a point where the usual “foundational” books or the books that were constantly being used in my field were not cutting it.

I learned a lot from the writings on geometry, philosophy, and anthropology that proved to deliver a lot more value in comparison to the then-trendy writers in my field.

Even some poetry books and novels were much more relevant for the design computation subjects than the books that were written in the field of design and computation! How could this even be possible?

A mentor of mine at some point told me that you could read and quote anyone you want. In his defense, he told anybody can bend any quote to their will to build things upon. This is by no means he said, cheating, on the contrary, it is the only way for us, as phenomenological beings, anyway.

Sounds unfair? That is what we all do. As?there are infinitely many ways to describe something, there are equally many different ways to?read?them.

Here are 25 book recommendations from my library -- 4 of which are shown below:

Find the writers who jot the words down the way you’d read them!

If something reads right and your gut tells it is right, it should be right for you.

Find the writers who write with your inner voice, ones who resonate with your thoughts and sensations, regardless of their discipline!

The disciplines and study fields as we know them do not exist! We make them up for convenience. It is easier to describe something within a limited domain—that is how we engineer out lives.

Discovering people whose thoughts parallel ours in our own field of study is already a blessing. However, if we can make deep connections to contributors of nonadjacent fields, then we have a higher probability to discover those rare inter-disciplinary innovations.

I used my Ph.D. years to discover people who are from very distinct disciplines yet had similar trains of thought. I made them meet in the same subject matter, regardless of their respective fields of literature, neuroscience, arts, mathematics, computing, and anthropology.

Echoing similar ideas across disciplines, these authors helped me align my thoughts, feelings, and sensations while using their findings as a foundation for mine.

Bring it back to human

Sure, first cover the foundational books in your field of study, nobody wants to give blank stares when somebody mentions something?basic.

But then quickly move on.

As I read, I discovered authors who produce universally applicable teachings. I would imagine their writings to help any researcher, designer, or writer.

These are authors who write with a constant concentration on human values and the human condition. They can do so because they do not remain strictly in their discipline and discuss the implications of their understanding across other disciplines.

[I exemplify this with specific writers in the main article.]

Assessing the implications of our focus area across a wide range of disciplines helps test the?repeatability,?applicability,?and?expansiveness?of our ideations.

·??????? Reading the authors in nonadjacent fields, we fact-check our claims.

·??????? Reading a human-centered writer, we become more value-driven.

·??????? Reading the authors who write with a similar voice to ours, we become better storytellers.

Overall, looking elsewhere, we unearth untouched gems.

You can?repeat?a quote that has been repeated a million times already. Then, repeat another one, but this time by?marrying it with another quote from a nonadjacent field.

This will generate a new idea. If not on the first try, in one of the next ones.

Through practicing this technique, one day, you will start quoting your own sentences, probably without even realizing it.

The words?that?have already been said?will become?your?words. And at an unexpected moment, something new will emerge!

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Read the full article in depth here:

https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/reading-authors-from-nonadjacent-fields-to-fuel-cross-disciplinary-innovation-eae7f83a9672

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https://medium.com/@OnurGun