Innovation requires Generalism!
Do you like the diversity of technology?! Do you feel interested about different fields in ICT?! Do you like to jump from one field to another? Do the buzzy words attracts your attention (e.g. BigData, AugmentedReality, IoT, PervasiveComputing… etc.), you believe you can handle whatever it takes and you feel the correlation among all?!!! You consider yourself as “Generalist”, “Jack of All Trades”, “Full-Stack Evangelist”… You are not a developer nor administrator neither… You are Engineer. A true Engineer, a one who can combine between variety of tools and technologies to provide a solution and get the job done.
If so, welcome to the generalist world. A world full of passion and enthusiasm. However, let me ask a question, is it a realistic world or a virtual one?
Being curious about technology would not be rewarding at some point and even would shape your biggest nightmare. Our business world nowadays looks for specialized people who can do certain stuff with number of years experience in one domain and it is a plus to have such portofolio to demonstrate your expertise. What if you passion drives you to explore and discover in a more breadth fashion rather than depth approach… Your passion for discovering and learning new technologies would be like a curse that will impact your career and consequently your life.
Let us talk about a real example: Someone started with computers since the time of DOS6.22 and Linux 12 diskettes. The Internet started with static websites with CGI-bin. Mobile phones and e-mails appears, Smart ones comes afterwards. She studied Electronics Engineering and majored in Computer Science. She familiarised with Maths, Robotics, AI, Software, Automation and Control. She falls in love with those and aim at combining it all. She works in embedded systems, network engineering, systems administration, and SW development; and so enhances her business and management skills with certifications; even tried the world of entrepreneurship. She reached successful steps in her career even though she still seeks fulfilling her passion and interest. After all these, in order to secure a good job to afford her living, she would find herself required to have a specialisation like being a developer in one field with certain years of experience. She does not find this as fair scheme for some people. Yeah, believe me, there are some people in this world witnessed the evolution and would like to have a hand on it without such kind of specialization.
Is not there a place for such kind of people?… who are innovation-driven, deal with machines but are not machines… They are humans seeking reasoning and bridging gaps… and certainly can get the job done… People who enjoy the diversity and can achieve outstanding results without conforming to predefined risk-free criteria.
Think out of the box… Do not put us in such box. As some companies devise the role of Happiness Officer, the Innovation Generalist role should be adopted. Innovation is not limited but open and free that should not be templated in a non-innovative box.
