Lessons Learned From Outside Innovators

In the theater of innovation, it is often the outsider who steals the spotlight. Consider Katalin Karikó, the Hungarian scientist who endured years of scorn for her theories about messenger RNA (mRNA). Eventually, her research became the cornerstone of rapid development work on a COVID-19 vaccine — and earned her and collaborator Drew Weissman the 2023 Nobel Prize in medicine.

Successful disrupters often start on the fringes, dismissed for their unconventional ideas or for pursuing paths others see as fruitless. But there is an upside to their outsider status: Unburdened by the ingrained norms and expectations that constrain insiders, they are uniquely positioned to connect disparate thoughts, see options that others have overlooked, and advance new perspectives that often have the potential of challenging, if not altering altogether, the status quo. Sociologists call this focused naivete — a productive ignorance of entrenched assumptions that enables outsiders to approach problems deemed trivial or unsolvable by experts.

Unfortunately, this freedom usually comes at a cost. The very distance that fuels outsiders’ innovative thinking can also hamper their quest for the backing and recognition needed to bring their ideas to fruition and share them with the world. Without traditional credentials, established networks, or experts’ stamp of approval, the outsider’s journey is often uphill: Along the path to the Nobel, Karikó was demoted and kicked out of her lab space at the University of Pennsylvania, and she was actively discouraged from pursuing work on mRNA. Eventually, in 2013, she joined BioNTech as a senior vice president, after the university denied her reinstatement to the faculty position that she had been demoted from nearly two decades earlier.

Karikó’s experience is emblematic of a broader paradox. As Paul Graham, the founder of Y Combinator, aptly observed, “Great new things often come from the margins, and yet the people who discover them are looked down on by everyone, including themselves.”1 This tension highlights the dual nature of outsider innovation: the ability to break free from conventional thinking while facing skepticism from those rooted in established norms.

How do successful outsiders navigate this paradox? More important, how can organizations remain open to the fresh perspectives that outsiders bring? The challenge lies not only in identifying original thinkers but also in empowering them — amplifying their voices, supporting their efforts, and fostering environments where atypical ideas can take root and thrive.