I have no idea how you got that conclusion from my comment. My point was that the academic attitude about expertise is pompous. I've worked with several academi

I have no idea how you got that conclusion from my comment. My point was that the academic attitude about expertise is pompous. I've worked with several academics and research labs trying to turn their research into startups, and you would not believe the attitudes prevalent in academia. The most common example of this I've seen is when professors bring up a potential competitor and state that the competitor does not have as much expertise (no founders with PhDs in the subject matter) as the professor, so the professor's new company should succeed wildly. If the attitude present in this article was paid any mind by innovators, we would not have some things we truly love. My favorite example is ZFS. Built by prodigious hackers, not distributed filesystem experts by any means. I can't find the article anymore, but I remember reading that they felt their lack of expertise allowed them to approach the problem from a new angle, ignoring common wisdom. My message to young entrepreneurs is this: Innovation doesn't work by experts expertly shaping the future incrementally. Innovation is messy. It works by lots of people - some experts, some not - trying to solve a problem. Almost everyone will fail, but you can't succeed if you don't try.