Why Great Leaders Bet On The Unusual
True breakthrough happens when leaders embrace the unconventional—and sometimes, the downright weird.
This expert opinion by Andrea Olson, CEO of Pragmadik, was originally published on Inc.com.
You’ve probably never looked at a Gila monster and thought, “That’s the future of diabetes treatment.” But that’s exactly where Ozempic, one of the world’s leading weight loss and diabetes drugs, got its start.
The compound semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic, was inspired by a hormone found in the venom of the Gila monster—a slow-moving, desert-dwelling lizard. For years, scientists studied how the Gila monster’s unique metabolism regulated blood sugar between infrequent meals. Sounds like a weird research project, right? To some corporate leaders, it probably looked like an irrelevant biology hobby. But from that peculiar creature came a multibillion-dollar pharmaceutical breakthrough.
The Messiness Of Innovation
Innovation rarely sprouts from linear paths or tidy org charts. It comes through a collision. It is what happens when a diverse range of knowledge, experiences, and disciplines smack into each other hard enough to spark something new.
You don’t get that spark by hiring rows of specialists with identical résumés and industry pedigrees. You get it by bringing in people who think differently, read differently, and live differently. People who’ve explored weird rabbit holes, questioned convention, and yes, maybe even spent a few years obsessed with desert reptiles.
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Hiring Across Unique Perspectives And Backgrounds
I’ve seen the same dynamic at play in other contexts. Take the invention of the touchscreen. While we marvel at our phones today, it’s easy to forget that touch-sensitive tech didn’t start in Silicon Valley. It started in the 1960s with a guy named E.A. Johnson at the Royal Radar Establishment in England, who was studying air traffic control systems. His goal wasn’t consumer electronics. It was safety, speed, and interface design in high-stakes environments. That knowledge evolved over decades, crossing industries and disciplines, until someone said, “Hey, this would work great on a phone.”
You can’t create that kind of leap with a team that’s been marinating in the same domain for a decade. Companies say they want innovation, but they often mean that only within strict boundaries. “Think outside the box,” the leaders say—but only if the box has a quarterly return on investment. The truth is, innovation looks messy before it looks brilliant. Studying a venomous lizard might seem like a waste of R&D budget until it turns into a drug that transforms millions of lives. Letting someone prototype an oddball idea in a corner might seem inefficient, until it becomes your next product line.
Learn To Value Experience And Interest
If you’re a leader, start valuing intellectual range. Hire the chemist who minored in philosophy. Promote the marketer who spends weekends building DIY robots. Listen to the quiet analyst who reads speculative fiction and questions your assumptions. These aren’t distractions. They’re raw material. Creativity doesn’t come from domain expertise alone. It comes from recombining what you know with what no one else thought to look at.
That only happens when leaders give people space and permission to explore. Not just 20 percent of their time or once-a-year hackathons, but as part of the culture. Curiosity can’t be a perk. It must be a priority.
How many of your current systems reward exploration? How often do you encourage cross-functional collisions? When was the last time someone was praised not for delivering on spec, but for pursuing an idea that sounded just a little crazy?
If the answer is rarely, you’re missing the next Gila monster moment. Innovation doesn’t knock on the front door in a suit and tie. The job isn’t to tame it. It’s to recognize that brilliance often wears strange costumes and to build a culture ready to welcome it.
