I've been thinking a lot about a concept I'm calling "Imported Knowledge": taking experience from one domain and applying to another. Now that I'm watching for it, I keep seeing this technique used in successful companies and products. (1/n)

e.g. Apple: "Our goal was to bring a liberal arts perspective and a liberal arts audience to what had traditionally been a very geeky technology and a very geeky audience." https://www.npr.org/2011/10/06/141115121/steve-jobs-computer-science-is-a-liberal-art (2/n)

In other words, Apple's special sauce was making computing better by using expectations, skills, and tools from other fields (art, industrial design, luxury goods, etc) that the tech industry previously lacked or ignored. (3/n)

Another example is expats/immigrants who use knowledge of one culture to improve another one, e.g. @DanGrover (you should follow!) who worked at WeChat in Guangzhou. His insights about Chinese mobile UX are so good because he knows *both* US & CN. http://dangrover.com/archive/  (4/n)

Another example: my previous company @cantaloupesys built tech for the vending industry. A big advantage was our CEO @mdeeps who had grown up in a family vending business, so he instinctually knew things about the industry that others needed time to discover. (5/n)

Another (sad) example: Adam Gadahn, who parleyed American-ness into a senior terrorist position:

> In a short period of time, Gadahn became a senior advisor to bin Laden...playing the role of "translator, video producer, and cultural interpreter." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Yahiye_Gadahn (6/n)

Another example is "Moneyball". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moneyball 

Any good scientist or financial analyst knows to use basic statistical techniques to optimize the return of a financial portfolio or scientific process. But applying these techniques to pro baseball was a huge innovation.

Or a personal example: I worked as a software developer for a few years before switching to PM. My atrophied dev skills are still very helpful, because it's much easier for me (compared to less technical PM folks) to efficiently communicate and collaborate with engineers. (7/n)

As these examples suggest, Imported Knowledge doesn't have to be expert-level. As long as it vastly exceeds normal expectations in your industry or role, even average knowledge of one domain can be a superpower in another domain. (8/n)

I often encourage people to "mine their experience" for potential Imported Knowledge superpowers. Have experience that's rare among your peers? Are there roles and/or companies where this knowledge would be unusually valuable? If so, pursue them. (Not terrorism though!) (9/n)

A corollary is to not worry about acquiring seemingly irrelevant experience. E.g. did you spend a year backpacking? You're now probably an expert in laundromats, cheap food, hostels, trains, and muggers. This expertise may be very valuable in the right company or role!

P.S. - What originally got me thinking about this was how zoonotic viruses often require an intermediate host (like pangolins for SARS-CoV-2 or pigs for 1918 Flu) that can carry and intermingle both human and animal viruses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoonosis  Stay safe out there! (10/n)

Oops, I messed up numbering on this thread. Doh! (11/n, but really 13/n)