16/03/2008
“ If you don’t leave le vide, you can have no unexpected things, no creation. […] You can try to design for everything, or you can leave le vide and say ‘I don’t know either, what do you think’. „
Jean-René Fourtou, quoted by Ronald S. Burt in The Social Origins of Good Ideas. Fourtou was the CEO of the French chemical company Rhône-Poulenc. He had noticed that his scientists had their best ideas when they interacted with people outside of their specific field. (Le vide translates as “the vacuum” or “the void”.)
Burt explains that “research has strategic value when an observer sees how a finding has implications for what other people see as unrelated theory. The creative spark on which serendipity depends, in short, is to see bridges where others see holes”.
Quote posted at 14:06
