I’ve always shied away from conventional wisdom, though I know the power of it.
I love the early sonatas; I love the early Mozart, period. I’m really fond of that moment when he was either emulating Haydn or Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach or anybody but himself. The moment he found himself, as conventional wisdom would have it, at the age of 18 or 19 or 20, I stop being so interested in him.
Around ’93, ’94, the conventional wisdom about the Internet was that it was a toy for academics and researchers. So it was very, very underestimated for about two years.
Conventional wisdom suggests the primary motivator for entrepreneurs is money or wealth creation and, in fact, much of the political debate tends to center around what kind of tax or regulatory policy changes will turn corporate suits into small business adventurers overnight.
In the beginning, Adam was instructed to earn the bread by the sweat of his brow – not Eve. Contrary to conventional wisdom, a mother’s place is in the home!
There’s the conventional wisdom, of which I have none, where you get a record deal, you get a publicist, you get a campaign, and you do the tour, but none of that adds up to things like nuance and subtlety and dynamic.
Even though my mom was talented and had a college degree, she lived in the era when the conventional wisdom in Dallas was that my dad worked, she was supposed to stay home and take care of the kids, and that was that. There really weren’t other opportunities for her, and most of them were volunteer opportunities.
What’s unique about the Mormon Church is that it encourages inquiry. I really do think my research and religion are all on the same page. I never could have come up with the notion of disruptive innovations, which went against a lot of conventional wisdom, if I hadn’t been raised to always be asking questions.
For decades, conventional wisdom in the United States held that it was only a matter of time before China would become more liberal, first economically and then politically. We could not have been more wrong – a miscalculation that stands as the greatest failure of U.S. foreign policy since the 1930s.
To build a great company, which is a CEO’s job, sometimes you have to stand up against conventional wisdom.
I love the early sonatas; I love the early Mozart, period. I’m really fond of that moment when he was either emulating Haydn or Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach or anybody but himself. The moment he found himself, as conventional wisdom would have it, at the age of 18 or 19 or 20, I stop being so interested in him.
There’s a conventional wisdom that says that strategic thinking is much more important than relationship building, which doesn’t seem to be nearly as highly valued as it should be, based on what some of the leaders that I’ve spoken with have said to me.
Hurricane Katrina overwhelmed levees and exploded the conventional wisdom about a shared American prosperity, exposing a group of people so poor they didn’t have $50 for a bus ticket out of town. If we want to learn something from this disaster, the lesson ought to be: America’s poor deserve better than this.
Never accept ultimatums, conventional wisdom, or absolutes.
We just don’t subscribe to the conventional wisdom that you can’t have an action series led by a female character. It’s kinda nonsense to us.
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