Imagination is more powerful than knowledge

I’m currently reading two books. Actually, I’m listening to one and reading another.

The one I’m reading is the new Steve Jobs book, Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader. The book I’m listening to when I drive or go for a run (via Audible), is Einstein: His Life and Universe.

It’s a really interesting experience to go through these two books at the same time. I put both Steve Jobs and Albert Einstein in the genius category, but what cannot be argued is that they were both cut from a different cloth than the rest of us.

Einstein was known to say, “imagination is more powerful than knowledge.” He rejected the idea that reading from a book and memorizing for a test was the best way to learn. Experimentation and questioning conventional wisdom, now that was how you really learn new things. Jobs obviously followed this same logic, seeing a future through imagination that at times only he could see.

That quote struck me as something that could be the defining difference between an entrepreneur and the rest of the world. Entrepreneurs can see a future that others cannot. Often times the best ideas are ones that only a single person can visualize.

Twitter is a great example. When Twitter first launched, I was among the loudest of the very large crowd that was shouting, “um, this is ridiculous.” And then it went and changed the world forever. I simply couldn’t see it.

Sometimes when people question what I’m doing, or an idea I have, that’s when I think I’m really onto something.