re: Which is more important, knowing something or being able to find the answer?

In the business world, Being able to find the answer is a higher value proposition.

We have mostly procedural departments at our company meaning, here is the step by step document to do your job, go do it. We can hire sub $20/hr employees all day to do those jobs.

Very few take the initiative to try to figure stuff out.

I’m a developer, so I have to play both sides of the coin here. A developer who can’t figure out how existing code works is not a very good asset. A developer who can only figure out how an application works but can’t write new code is also not ideal.