Benefits of amateurism

"Ford had attracted to his factory a core of perhaps a dozen or a dozen and a half young, fitted mechanics, none of whom had developed set ways of doing things.  Encouraged by Ford, this group carried out production experiments and worked out fresh ideas in gauging, fixture, design, machine tool design and placement, factory layout, quality control, and materials handling.  Had the factory been rooted in a definite manufacturing tradition, such as Yankee armory practice or even 'Western' practice as exemplified by the Western wheel works, the Ford company might never have finished cars for the masses.  In a sense the Ford production engineers took what was the best from each approach to manufacture and overcame limitations to these methods by adding their own brand of production techniques."
-quoted in HBS Case "Ford vs G: The Evolution of Mass Production"

Physicist Michael Polayni commented "I would have never conceived my theory, let along made a great effort to verify it, if I had been more familiar with major developments in physics that were taking place.  Moreover, my initial ignorance of the powerful, false objections that were raised against my ideas protected those ideas from being nipped in the bud."
-quote in HBS BSSE Module Note - "Exploration vs. Exploitation"