Amen to that. Insecurity destroys whole worlds full of ideas every day. "The Myth of the Genius Programmer" is one of my favorite presentations: http://code.go

Amen to that. Insecurity destroys whole worlds full of ideas every day. "The Myth of the Genius Programmer" is one of my favorite presentations: http://code.google.com/events/io/2009/sessions/MythGeniusProgrammer.html http://code.google.com/events/io/2009/sessions/MythGeniusPro... From a "corporate" perspective, I think insecurity often stems from the mandate to produce output and not waste time, and no one wants to produce half-baked or poorly-thought-out output, so they throw their ideas in the trash. EDIT: Also, the importance of asking stupid questions. Stupid questions are the most important ones to ask, because everyone else was probably too afraid to ask them, resulting in gaps in thinking that you could drive a fleet of trucks through. For this reason, sometimes the most important person on a design team is the person who has the faintest idea of what's going on and asks questions about existing processes that everyone takes for granted - they ask seemingly nonsensical questions that challenge the thinking of everyone stuck in tunnel vision.