In terms of starting a startup.<p>And even more so if the domain knowledge / connections matter a lot, like building something for Hollywood for example.
You have to research the domain, and gather the knowledge. Not knowing the domain can make that difficult because you sometimes chase rabbits down holes that go no where but you have to look at it as education for education's sake.<p>I will give you an example, I am a vehicle restoration enthusiast, I do what are referred to in the domain as restomods. The particular segment that I am a hobbyist in is older off road vehicles. There is a huge problem in this domain right now due to the computerization of the engine and transmission, when doing restomods many hobbyist like to update the power-train to a modern power-train, but in doing so they have to swap the entire power-train. There is no easy way to say take the best transmission available and couple it with the best engine available. If you want to you have to buy a black box from a vendor.<p>A lot of guys don't like having those kinds of restrictions as they like to tinker with the whole mod so they opt to stick to technology up to the point of computerization which has limited there options. For me, I never liked the idea of having those kind of constraints, so I started reading everything that I could about how these systems worked.<p>There is not a lot of direct information about how to modify them so you have to gather the domain knowledge and then begin the process of reverse engineering these systems. I read a lot of information that had no direct relevance to hacking ECU's but there may be one nugget of information in a book that lead to a discovery on my own. At first it was daunting because I did not know how to even identify quality information, but just reading and reading helped me to focus portions of the domain knowledge into something usable.<p>I use ECU hacking as an example because it is known for being a black art with very little direct information available, therefore one has to acquire domain knowledge to develop direct education on the system at hand.
Get the domain knowledge through brute force,research,personal projects and determination. Even if it takes years. If you truly have passion it shouldn't be an issue. If you want to talk to people smarter than you then cold email them but make sure you always have something to "give" in the emails.If you don't, you will look like a leech.Read "How to win friends and influence people".