I find in academe (more than in the commercial world) that a great deal of time is spent in discussing definitions. This seems true of all disciplines, but of course it impacts on me particularly when people say, for example, “What exactly do we mean by innovation (or creativity or leadership or ideas or concepts or whatever)?”
It’s never appealed to me much as an approach. A great deal of time and intellectual energy is consumed getting to “Go”. Sometimes that process never seems to stop – as though finding the perfect definition is itself the purpose of the exercise. The consequence, of course, is that correspondingly less time is spent addressing the issue in hand.
The philosopher of science, Professor Karl Popper (of whom I wrote on October 11 - "Searching for flaws"), was equally dismissive of this syndrome, which I call definitionitis. Definitions, he pointed out, are by their nature tautological, and therefore of limited value in the problem-solving arena. A second consequence is that definitions laboriously arrived at can have the unintended effect of excluding interesting, speculative, lateral ideas – ideas which might lead to previously unconsidered new hypotheses, approaches and solutions.
Popper believed that discussion of the meaning of words can become not only unhelpful (and boring), but can actually be destructive. He was of the view that creative discussion itself, uninhibited by prior agreement around the meanings of terms being used, was more likely to lead to breakthrough ideas.
Have you been in situations where inability to move past the defining of terms led to short- or long-term paralysis?
By the way, it’s exactly a year since I started this blog. Let me know if there are particular issues you’d like aired in it.
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