Sometimes I wonder what I can contribute by writing about what I know. I have this idea I have to contribute something “new.” But as I browse social media, I see many posts about topics I already know. The findings were written in academic articles 10, 20, 40 years ago. But that’s the problem. They are in academic articles. Only a handful of academics in the same disciplines tend to read them. A brief synopsis is mentioned in a handful of college textbooks. As enthusiastically as we may profess them in our classes, only a handful of those ideas create a lasting impact on a handful of students. A handful of a handful of a handful of benefit.
Enter Malcolm Gladwell. Enter Dan Pink. Thank you to these journalists who have taken good ideas and brought them to the rest of us. Thank you to TED for creating a space for delivering “ideas worth spreading.” Fortunately the academic model is shifting so that writing books for every day readers is not somehow “beneath our dignity” as scholars. (Thank you, Levitt & Dubner, Thaler & Sunstein, and Adam Grant.)
I’m going to start dredging my memory banks for academic topics long forgotten to share with others who have not had the privilege of hearing the good news.
Puzzle Pieces Coaching 