In this episode, the Grid’s Future Might Lie with 'Outsiders.'
In a previous episode of On the Fly, I posed a thought experiment:
If the grid went down forever, what part of my work would still matter?
That question sparked more conversation than I expected.
One comment, in particular, made me stop and reread it twice:
“Are you in touch with and talking with those in your own company about the question you are asking? It is your business, yes?”
And the short answer is: Yes.
These conversations happen—often, seriously, and with no shortage of charts and careful language.
But the longer answer is this: The question itself was never meant to stay inside the building.
When Expertise Becomes a Blind Spot.
There’s a concept called functional fixedness.
It’s what happens when experience—valuable, hard-earned experience—quietly limits what we imagine is possible. When you work inside a system long enough, you get very good at improving it.
You know which knobs to turn.
Which levers not to touch.
Which ideas will get approved . . . and which ones will be politely thanked and set aside.
That’s how systems remain stable. But it’s rarely how they change.
If innovation only came from insiders, we’d still be trying to invent flight by upgrading horse-drawn carriages.
Better wheels.
Stronger horses.
Same road.
Progress Has a Habit of Arriving Sideways.
Real breakthroughs tend to come from people who weren’t trying to solve that problem at all.
Take the transistor.
Before it existed, electronics ran on vacuum tubes—hot, fragile, and about as subtle as a space heater. Improving them made sense . . . if you were already in the vacuum tube business. The breakthrough didn’t come from better tubes.
Result? The digital age.
Or Velcro.
No committee sat around saying, “We need a better fastener.”
A guy went for a walk, got burrs stuck to his pants, and got curious. Under a microscope, irritation turned into invention.
And MRI machines?
They didn’t begin in hospitals. They began in nuclear physics labs—scientists studying atomic nuclei with no medical application in mind.
Decades later, we’re seeing inside the human body because someone followed a question that didn’t seem useful at the time.
Outsiders. Again!
The Grid Isn’t Just an Industry.
The electrical grid is something most of us don’t think about . . .
right up until we can’t make coffee.
It isn’t just an energy problem.
It’s a systems problem.
A materials problem.
A human behavior problem.
Which means the next big idea probably won’t come from a single department, discipline, or job title.
It might come from biology. Or physics.
Or someone studying how complex systems fail—and how they recover.
Someone who doesn’t even realize they’re working on “The Grid.”
So . . . Is It My Business?
Yes.
But it’s also everyone’s.
This thought experiment wasn’t an audit. It was an invitation.
To step back.
To widen the circle.
To ask who else might be holding a missing piece.
Because when the question is,
“What would still matter if the grid went down forever?”
The answer probably won’t arrive in an email.
It will arrive sideways.
From curiosity.
From outsiders.
From someone brave enough to ask a different question.
And history suggests—that’s where the real answers usually come from.
Innovation rarely knocks on the front door. It usually wanders in through the garage—holding a strange idea—and asks, “Mind if I try something?”
I’m Patrick Ball. Stay curious and keep asking questions. See you in the next episode.
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