Confidence: another element for successful innovation

In the town I grew up in Scotland, Crieff, there were two schools, a high school and a public school (fee-paying school). During exam periods my friends and I from the high school would compare exam results with our friends from the public school. The results were surprising: my friends and I would often get better results than the public school students. How could this be so? They are so eloquent. They must be better than us. Or prehaps not. We soon learned from this not to equate confidence, which oozed from the public school students, with ability. I think that because our schools were in such close physical proximity, we could break through the veneer (myth) that public schools create for themselves. In this sense, our experience was quite unique -- most public schools in Scotland are deliberately "set apart" from the free schools.

Wasn't it Nietzche who wrote in Beyond Good and Evil: "Having a talent is not enough: one also requires your permission to have that talent—right, my friends?"

Check out Paul Potts, mobile phone salesman from Wales -- soon to be Paul Potts, opera singer.



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