Why divergent thinkers beat geniuses in the real world | David Epstein

Don’t take the prodigy pathway. David Epstein says become a broad thinker instead. Subscribe to Big Think on YouTube ► Get smarter, faster with our playlist ► The idea for Nintendo’s Game Boy system was born from a philosophy that had a much less catchy name: lateral thinking with withered technology. The term was coined by Gunpei Yokoi, a Nintendo employee who started at the company with a similarly dry job: machine maintenance worker. One day, a Nintendo executive noticed that Yokoi had built a simple extendable-arm-grabber toy in his free time. Let’s sell it, the executive said. It became a small hit. Yokoi was eventually promoted to help build out the company’s video game business. But he recognized that he didn’t have the expertise to advance the cutting edge of the video game world. So he decided on a very specific str