Sitting in a cubicle of area 4ft by 4ft, hearing the various discussions related to how best a solution could be optimized, discussions on algorithms and their time complexities, deliverables and deadlines, days and days of project planning, and implementation, I can’t help but think on the very basic ideas of why technology came into picture in the first place, and how the majority is devoid of conceptualizing new advancements, rather blindly running to achieve ideas seldom comprehended.

Technology – as defined by Oxford is the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in industry. Of late, this has reduced to “scientific knowledge” only for people who are capable of understanding, learning and growing in and from it. Be it Civil Engineers, braving weathers and research to keep the lands separated by deep waters, or Computer science graduates, writing tons of lines of code to keep the bridges between humans afloat, the focus lately has been more on how best the bridges can be built, polished and looked after rather than why bridges were conceptualized in the first place.

Here’s an example, a young scholar/graduate when joins any company/industry is expected to have the knowledge of how certain technologies can be best used, specialists focusing only the areas where fragments of a big picture idea, gets implemented. By the time they’re rebellious enough to challenge the norms, the big picture they worked on either already gets shelved or is overshadowed by another big picture, they aren’t expected to understand, at least that’s what is expected of them, and serves everyone above and beyond. In the end, the person is very well experienced to understand big picture broken down into small ideas, and how best to implement it. But did he get a chance to challenge the existing systems, or ideate in the first place? I guess some do, but most don’t. They’re busy trying to fit in the big tunnel industries have crafted for themselves, shaping themselves into molds without the ability to have choices.

The change can’t really be immediate, not even the discussion of getting the same done would, but believe it or not, we’re losing out on the bright minds and the absurd-but-worth-discussing-on ideas they might have regarding your company or the product you’re working on. Now, I am sure people would come up with examples for inclusivity and all those forums where people can put in their ideas, but I guess everyone is aware of how complaint/suggestion boxes work. What we need is, a comprehensive overhaul of the way we perceive any worker, only as a specialist to their particular job, or a thinker who can come up with ideas that can benefit your business more. A counter argument would be, that businesses have thinktanks and people who are there to ideate and take decisions and given the experiences those are the best possible chances of solutions, and also involving your whole work force for all the solutions would be tedious, costly and time ineffective, only positive would be that you have a solution thought upon by 10 times your competitor, with most of the possible faults in the “big picture” already thought of, and addressed.

There could be many ways to address this, one being the early alignment of employees with the core working of your company objectives and opening up platforms and portals for them to put their ideas into, or involving them early on in the discussions, and having a mandatory review/plan the case studies/challenges company went through, throwing it open for them to get solutions of already solved problems. But the main thing is, to let go of the mindset of specialties devising only good solutions. We did not have degrees when we first came up with the wheels to transport our things.

Definitely, knowledge of technology is a plus, but technology should be used as tools to compliment the ideas, not the other way around.

Disclaimer: The above writeup is based on ideas/thoughts and is purely reflective of author’s personal views.