"The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones"
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The hardest part of innovation is not the spark of novelty but the slow, stubborn work of unlearning. John Maynard Keynes knew that intellect alone does not move societies; habits, interests, and inherited frameworks anchor thought. He wrote amid the Great Depression, when orthodox economists still trusted self-correcting markets to restore full employment. Yet the slump persisted. Keynes offered a new lens: demand shortfalls, animal spirits, liquidity preference, and the case for active fiscal policy. None of this was mystical or esoteric. The barrier was the prestige and comfort of the classical creed that promised equilibrium without intervention. Letting go of that creed required admitting that markets could settle in underemployment and that policy had a legitimate, even necessary, role.
The line points to cognitive and institutional inertia. Training, textbooks, and professional incentives reward continuity. Mental models filter evidence, and confirmation bias makes anomalies easy to dismiss. Institutions encode old ideas into rules and metrics, so policymakers keep doing what is measurable rather than what is needed. Ideological identities make retreat feel like betrayal. Keynes also saw how practical decision-makers unknowingly echo defunct theories; old ideas persist not just in classrooms but in boardrooms and ministries. His revolution thus began by reframing the questions: not how prices adjust to clear markets in the long run, but what determines output and employment when confidence collapses and money is held for safety.
The insight travels beyond economics. Progress in science, business, and public policy often hinges on subtraction as much as addition, on clearing away assumptions that once worked but now obstruct. Crises can jolt minds loose, yet even after 2008 many clung to pre-crisis models. Creativity, then, is an act of intellectual disobedience paired with humility. To make room for new ideas, one must deliberately make old ones contestable, cultivate tolerance for anomaly, and design institutions that prize revision over dogma.
The line points to cognitive and institutional inertia. Training, textbooks, and professional incentives reward continuity. Mental models filter evidence, and confirmation bias makes anomalies easy to dismiss. Institutions encode old ideas into rules and metrics, so policymakers keep doing what is measurable rather than what is needed. Ideological identities make retreat feel like betrayal. Keynes also saw how practical decision-makers unknowingly echo defunct theories; old ideas persist not just in classrooms but in boardrooms and ministries. His revolution thus began by reframing the questions: not how prices adjust to clear markets in the long run, but what determines output and employment when confidence collapses and money is held for safety.
The insight travels beyond economics. Progress in science, business, and public policy often hinges on subtraction as much as addition, on clearing away assumptions that once worked but now obstruct. Crises can jolt minds loose, yet even after 2008 many clung to pre-crisis models. Creativity, then, is an act of intellectual disobedience paired with humility. To make room for new ideas, one must deliberately make old ones contestable, cultivate tolerance for anomaly, and design institutions that prize revision over dogma.
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