As engineers, scientists, consultants, etc. we are frequently presented with complex problems in our daily lives. In fact, this is sometimes the only purpose of our work lives--to solve these problems for ourselves (and others) and probably more often than not we will sit down and think about the solution ourselves or perhaps discuss the problem with colleagues to bat around ideas for a solution. Perhaps when we get the problem refined to a particularly low level and we still don’t have a clear answer we might try researching, even asking around on the internet to find other people who might have encountered the same problem (all too often encountering this problem). But how often do we just go out to listen and learn from people in similar domains to discover things we may not encounter in our day to day life, but might translate to help solve problems we might face down the road?
