Voices
breakneck speed, expertise is
obsolete within five to 10 years.
Think of all the industries turned
on their heads by Internet disintermediation, whether it was
book and magazine publishing,
the printing industry, the recording industry or retail sales, to
name a few. MySpace rose and
fell from grace as the world’s
leading social network in less
than five years and pundits already question whether the era of
Facebook, with its more than 900
million active users, is over.
The digital revolution has also
meant a revolution in access to information. This puts more power
and knowledge into the hands of
non-experts. Open-source encyclopedias such as Wikipedia and
search engines such as Google
and Bing, which people can tap
into anytime and anywhere via
computers and smart phones, put
a world of knowledge at our fingertips at a lower cost than ever
before. Granted, they alone don’t
make us experts—but they give
us access to information in abundance, giving us a greater base
from which to “think big.”
Some of the most inspiring and
innovative minds I know are such
disruptors. Take Elon Musk, a fel-
NAVEEN
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HUFFINGTON
07.15.12
low trustee at the X-PRIZE Foundation. The South African-born
engineer and entrepreneur has
never hesitated to venture into new
waters where he had no industry
expertise but felt he could make
a difference. The former founder
of PayPal is now CEO and CTO of
SpaceX, a private company sending
cost-effective space launch vehicles
and rockets into space, and is cofounder and head of product design
at Tesla Motors,
where he led development of the elecWith
tric vehicle Tesla
technological
Roadster.
advances
The goal must
occurring at
be to expand ourbreakneck
selves beyond one
speed, expertise
field of focus and
is obsolete
use our improved
within fi