In 1938, MIT student Claude Shannon solved one of the most complex problems of circuit design. Working on an early analog computer, he realized that an idea from an undergraduate philosophy course could solve the problem. Applying Boolean algebra, Shannon laid the foundation of all electronic digital computers. As he put it: “It just happened that no one else was familiar with both fields at the same time.”

You may think that this was one of those lucky coincidences that change the world but almost never happen. You are wrong. In his book Seeing What Others Don’t (Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2013), Gary Klein studied 120 of the most important inventions and discoveries in history: 82 percent of them emerged when people from different disciplines started to talk to each other and exchanged ideas.

Follow some simple rules, and you may see what others don’t as well.

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