Innovation comes from people who can see the world differently.
“Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.
”
We can build echo chambers by hiring for people who think like us. The interview process will even be pleasant because… you agree on everything. But if you want innovation, you must find those who can challenge norms and think differently.
One interesting approach to find different thinkers is to hire people who are not in your industry. We often target candidates with experience within our domain, because it would be easier for this person to ramp up, understand the dark corners of edge cases, and speak to customers in a language they understand.
But people who are not veterans at a specific thing will think differently, and try to apply ideas from a different set of domain expertise. They won’t be trapped by the traditional thinking and expectations of those that have been doing it for a long time. They will often bring a fresh set of ideas that sprout from just viewing problems from completely different angles.
Sometimes this works, sometimes this doesn't. But it almost always brings a different perspective. Ensure you foster an environment that promotes oddball approaches to problems. Preposterous ideas can sometimes lead to huge innovations after a few iterations. But you would never even be in the zip code of that idea if you didn’t start from someplace different.
Just make sure, at the end of the day, that you still understand who your users are and what problems they need solved, as that’s the most important thing–even if you want to take novel approaches to solve them.