> Doroshin told NBC's "Today" show that his company didn't think like a traditional medical institution. "We're engineers, we're scientists, computer scientists, we're cybersecurity nerds. We think a little differently than people in health care do."
> "We took the entire model and just threw it out the window," Doroshin added. "We said to hell with all of that. We're going to completely build on a new model that is based on a factory."
It’s mind boggling how many times we see this belief that some groups (among many) who are thought to be prone to analytical thinking can solve problems and “throw out” knowledge, learnings, experience and wisdom from core groups who have been in the space for longer. There is a space for disruption, thinking outside the box, etc., in every field, but many a times this seems to be based solely on hubris.
“We’ve carefully explored the current solution space, and we’ve decided it was best to build a new solution from first-principles”
It doesn’t have the same ring as “throwing things out the window” outright, and it’s a lot of extra work. Stopping to see where the old solutions failed, and if they had any merit to begin with? Ugh, out with the old already.
A degree of hubris, yes. An irreverence, certainly. It is necessary to not operate within the intellectual framework of a field in order to revolutionize it. Incrementally modifying the framework is extremely difficult because there are usually networks of reinforcement of the current structure (or it wouldn’t be stable..) so a non-incremental “jump” is required to climb a different hill. This jump is mythologized as starting from scratch, though often times most of the weirdness goes away and only the essentially advantageous difference remains as the company or project matures.
I think one of the key points is that you can’t tell if a system needs evolutionary (incremental) or revolutionary change unless you analyze it in depth. “It’s not working” as a superficial observation of effect is not good enough - it may be on the cusp of working with a few tweaks, which would be much more efficient than starting over. As with any idea, throwing things out of the window can be good if it’s complemented with a set of clauses (“we’re starting over because of a, b and c”). The concept on its own is likely hubris or misguided based on the false pretense that revolution for the sake of revolution is good.
I apologize for not having been a bit more clear: the actual end result from this is incremental progress, but often the path to incremental change begins with starting over (somewhat paradoxically, perhaps)
> Doroshin told NBC's "Today" show that his company didn't think like a traditional medical institution. "We're engineers, we're scientists, computer scientists, we're cybersecurity nerds. We think a little differently than people in health care do."
> "We took the entire model and just threw it out the window," Doroshin added. "We said to hell with all of that. We're going to completely build on a new model that is based on a factory."
It’s mind boggling how many times we see this belief that some groups (among many) who are thought to be prone to analytical thinking can solve problems and “throw out” knowledge, learnings, experience and wisdom from core groups who have been in the space for longer. There is a space for disruption, thinking outside the box, etc., in every field, but many a times this seems to be based solely on hubris.