Richard Saul Wurman is an architect, a graphic designer, and is credited with co-founding the TED Conference. TED is rooted in the vision of “ides worth spreading”. Get good people that know a lot about whatever it is they know a lot about and provide them with a platform to share that knowledge with everyone else who listens. Not entirely innovative, but brilliant nonetheless.
Yesterday I wrote a bit on the topic of selling your work and showing expertise. In the film, Eames: The Architect and The Painter, Wurman has this to say on the topic of selling and discovery:
“…When you sell your expertise, you have a limited repertoire. When you sell your ignorance, it’s an unlimited repertoire. Eames was selling his ignorance and his desire to learn about a subject, and the journey of him not knowing to knowing was his work.”
The journey of not knowing to knowing is the journey we all find ourselves on. At Proof, one of our core values is “be better than yesterday” – which means we embrace that every moment in the future is an opportunity to be wiser and more versed than the moment that just passed.
If you find yourself on the journey to be the best, smartest, or first, you’ll likely find it to be an uphill, maddening climb.
Embrace the journey to knowing more now than you did a moment ago. Your expertise is finite but your ignorance and learning are infinite.
That discovery – that process – that journey – is what sells. Moreover, it’s what makes the world a better, smarter, awesome-er place.