I am Antonio Stoilkov
Steve Jobs in an interview – "I would always ask why you do things and the answers you would invariable get are "Oh that is just the way it's done"". The interview – watch the next 2 minutes.
Elon Musk in an interview – "People assume too many things to be true. Analyze things from first principles not by analogy or not by convention". The interview – watch the entire thing, it's one minute.
😄 Potential for innovation. I am basing this argument on the Paul Graham essay General and Surprising. If you read the essay you will understand the power of discovering something that is both general(knowledge that applies to a big area) and surprising(things others don't expect to be that way). When both conditions are met there is an opportunity for big value creation. Discovering that a convention is wrong is both general and surprising.
😄 Increasingly more important. The world is changing rapidly. The last 100 years were packed with more changes when compared to the previous 100. These changes cause a lot of conventions to get outdated cause conventions are true only in specific contexts and environments. However, our brains and culture haven't evolved to this idea and we haven't changed the speed with which we change our minds. This means that we change our minds as often as our ancestors did but we end up more misguided. Conventions also increase in count. As the world gets more complicated we rely on more fundamental knowledge we don't question so we can build on top of it.
