No Credentials, No Problem | #80

By Armaan Athwal

There’s a pattern you start to notice if you pay attention:

Many breakthroughs in science, business, and art, don’t come from the people you'd expect.

They come from outsiders. Not necessarily amateurs or rebels. But people who aren’t formally trained in the field they end up disrupting.

This isn’t always the case. Some innovations are the result of deep, focused, decades-long work by domain experts.

But still… there’s something worth exploring here. Why do so many creative leaps come from people outside the system?

Let’s look at a few examples:

• Elon Musk didn’t come from aerospace. But when he entered the space industry, he refused to accept that rockets had to cost hundreds of millions of dollars. His outsider perspective helped SpaceX rethink fundamental assumptions.

• Claude Shannon, the father of information theory, had a background in electrical engineering and philosophy, and it was that combination that helped him formalize the idea of digital communication.

• Jeff Bezos worked in finance before launching Amazon. His unique blend of tech curiosity and business acumen helped him treat the internet like a logistics puzzle.

• Luis von Ahn, a computer scientist from Guatemala, wasn’t trained in linguistics or education, but he knew what it felt like to be on the outside of opportunity. Growing up, access to language learning was limited and expensive. So when he built Duolingo, he approached it not as an expert, but as someone who knew what was missing.

There’s something powerful about not knowing the “rules.”

Outsiders don’t carry the same mental baggage. They’re less likely to inherit assumptions about what is or isn’t possible. They’re also more likely to cross-pollinate to pull ideas from other fields and apply them in unexpected ways.

But it’s not a matter of just being an outsider.

Breakthroughs often come from people who straddle the edge. They aren’t total beginners, but they’re also not entirely absorbed in the culture of the field. They hover in the in-between. Curious enough to dive deep, but free enough to question everything.

Sometimes that’s an artist wandering into neuroscience.
Sometimes it’s a physicist toying with finance.
Sometimes it’s you, exploring something just outside your lane.

This doesn’t discredit the experts. Fields need people who grind daily, refine ideas, and keep the machine running. But when everyone shares the same mental models, it gets harder to see the blind spots. That’s when fresh eyes become most valuable.

So if you ever feel like you’re not qualified to think about a topic — good.
You might see what others can’t.

Not because you know more.

But because you haven’t been taught what to ignore.

Quote of the Day

“The two hardest tests on the spiritual road are the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what we encounter.” - Paulo Coelho