It sounds to me that you have discovered an important and often underestimated property of disruptive ideas. How did an 18 year old change the way we communicate online forever? How could a clerk at the patent office usher in the era of 20th century physics?

It's possible and maybe even easier to have truly breakthrough ideas if you're coming from a different field. You can always catch up on all the knowledge required to execute your idea later.

And yes, often you'll find out that your idea wasn't so great. But at least you didn't dismiss it as out of hand because you didn't come across it in your years of experience in the field.

It's wrong to think that Einstein was "coming from a different field". He had a PhD in physics from a good school. In his day, physics jobs were much scarcer, so perfectly ordinary physicists tended to need to get non-physics jobs for parts of their careers.

Perhaps a better example is how an aspiring poet came to invent the most effective infantry weapon of the last century: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Kalashnikov

An aspiring poet who had also been a tank mechanic/weapons designer for 9~ years prior to inventing the most effective infantry weapon of the last century

Yes, but he was conscripted in his teens and had begun innovating at that young age.

Not sure it is a good analogy. From the article you are referencing he wanted to be an engineer, just an agricultural one. WW2 changed that.

Also, he seems to acknowledge the fact that he was standing on the shoulders of giants:

But one thing is clear: before attempting to create something new, it is vital to have a good appreciation of everything that already exists in this field. I myself have had many experiences confirming this to be so.

No, a better example is Elon Musk himself. Paypal, SpaceX, Tesla. That's a pretty good run and I don't think anybody will claim he was an insider to all three industries before he made a significant dent in them.

It is extremely rare for someone with little to no knowledge or training in a field to step in and change everything. Anyone claiming to do so should is making extraordinary claims and needs to provide extraordinary evidence.

True, but disruption is extremely rare in mechanical and civil engineering. It's more common in SW and theoretical fields.

Sounds like a marketing problem for these diligent hard workers? But would more attention aid them in their decade long hikes or hinder them by opening them up to more public scrutiny and the possible need to appease that can follow? Certainly don't know myself.

it's not a marketing problem. people outside a given field will, by virtue of their inexperience, be prone to more hubristic ideas they don't understand the impossibility of. combined w/ the tech scene's natural credulity - as demonstrated by the Soylent debacle - & there you go.

the problem w/ casually describing it as a "marketing problem" is it completely excuses both entrepreneurial excess & the whole Valley hype thing. sure, there should be an onus on people to present/market their ideas well, but also on the public to be a little more skeptical of wild & unfounded claims.

I missed the soylent 'debacle', what went wrong?

I think the parent is talking about the massive hype[1] generated around Soylent, which is i) weird ii) not in any way original and iii) sub-optimally marketed with some probably illegal claims.

[1] It's really impressive how they managed to create such interest around a product idea, with people describing it as innovative and disruptive, when you've been able to walk into any drugstore and buy identical (but better researched and quality assured) products off the shelf.

the part where a guy who has no idea what he's doing got an absurdly positive response for a product that's nothing new at best & dangerous at worst

Well, think about how little spotlight Thorium have when it comes down to it. Only recently have there started to be momentum to get this field to a point where we can say whether it possible or not.

I would assume there are thousands of other areas like this where some "better" version never sees the light of day.