Here's an interesting article by Randall Fielding in PLD - the official magazine of the ELDA (European Lighting Designers’ Association) and the IALD (International Association of Lighting Designers).

The opening paragraphs make some interesting points.

In a world where advanced degrees in professional disciplines are rapidly becoming a commodity, prosperity belongs to individuals with the ability to react with agility to unpredictable market forces, data, and events.

Fortunately, responding to unexpected events is natural to human beings. We did not evolve as a species to think in a linear path, nor do we learn that way.

Isn't it interesting that for most of recent history, our education systems have been focused on the linear learning of facts? We seem to have been trying to educated out parts of our innate humanity - agility, creativity, adaptability - so as to better fit people into linear and hyperspecialised jobs.