Experience is overrated

Before AOC became the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, she was a local organizer who knocked on doors for the Sanders campaign.

Before Steve Jobs founded one of the world’s most iconic companies, he was an intern at Atari.

And just two years before his first TV show, Jon Stewart was waiting tables at a Mexican restaurant.

In certain lines of work, experience is overrated. Great things get accomplished by people without much pedigree or experience.

One reason this happens is because markets, technology, and culture are constantly in flux — which means our knowledge is often grounded in a world that has already changed. The chemists of today become the alchemists of tomorrow.

When that’s the case, it’s more important that we develop tools for discovery instead.

Open-mindedness, curiosity, and passion — when it comes to doing great things, those will often be better predictors of success than experience.

---