james burke

• like a pal at oxford who had his doctorate in the 17th century english poet milton's use of the comma.
  
  you laugh? he's now a head of department at a major american university. because he did what reductionism requires you to do to be a success: "make your specialist niche so *small*, there's only room in there for you." and in his case, your comma. and then and above all, explain yourself only in gobbly-gook. that way you are incomprehensible and therefore irreplaceable - you may know a few.
  
  this is one of the reasons why innovation is always a surprise because as reductionism is applied the body of the knowledge has ever become more specialist, ever more fragmented, ever more complex.
  
  so even as a specialist, you don't know what the guys at the next workbench are doing. scratching their heads over something so esoteric, you can not even spell it. and then letting it out there into the world, letting it loose, to interact with other products of other noodlers to create change that nobody expects, least of all the unsuspecting slob in the street.
  
  small wonder then that this process generates the holiday making depressed i mentioned at the start and the non-linear toilet-roll innovation sequences that make planning so difficult.
  
  so not surprisingly a lot of people find managing change difficult because the reductionist process has not prepared us above all to handle the ripples that spread out from innovation.