Elon, the Expert Generalist
How does Elon Musk wields such a broad and deep skill set? And could your “lack of focus” signal great unrecognized potential?
This week in corporate and technology news, discussion has focused on Elon Musk’s acquisition of a significant share of Twitter stock. The acquisition was followed closely by the offer of a board seat and then by polling his followers to immediately begin shaping Twitter’s product direction. Elon has taken this position because of concerns about Twitter’s censorship policies excessively stifling public discourse. For many this move has been confusing. It gives us an excellent opportunity to discuss the poorly-understood expert generalist role and the different perspective that it brings.
Expert generalists: the people who know a lot about a lot
Most people think of the world as being composed of generalists, who know a little about a lot, and specialists, who know a lot about a little. But there is an under-appreciated third category: the expert generalist, who knows a lot about a lot. Expert generalists wield a skill set and knowledge base that are both broad — spanning multiple domains of knowledge — and deep — able to operate at a high level of difficulty.
The term “expert generalist” was coined by Orit Gadiesh, chairman of top-tier consulting firm Bain & Company and one of the world’s most impactful leaders. But it is Elon Musk who provides the most visible example of how an expert generalist thinks and operates and the disproportionate impact one can have.
David Epstein’s 2019 book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World delved into the advantages of the generalist perspective. Our society tends to privilege experts because their competence is easily signaled and understood. In fields like medicine, law, and academic studies a more specialized degree is taken as a stamp of greater experience and competence. But Epstein noted it is generalists who often make the most impactful breakthroughs by using their ability to transfer knowledge between domains to bring new insight. The most highly capable, or “expert,” generalists can operate on “wicked” problems where the complex environment and shifting, unpredictable landscape does not admit specialists to apply the rules-based thinking they have mastered.
How the “unfocused” can turn out to become elite performers
Epstein noted that generalists have these characteristics:
- They tend to study across multiple domains of knowledge (often unrelated).
- They are often seen as “unfocused,” particularly early in their careers, because they study broadly and can abandon projects quickly if they perceive they are not productive.
- With time and significant study, generalists can convert themselves to expert generalists, able to operate at near-expert levels across an entire cluster of fields (including what appear to be hobbies) where they have built dense cross-domain connections.
- They can then bring the lessons from that cluster into new domains surprisingly quickly.
Elon’s trajectory — from un-hire-able to top technologist
Elon’s career provides a case study of a classic expert generalist. From his undergraduate dual-major in physics (the broadest field in general science) and economics, he was accepted into a Stanford physics PhD program but left rapidly to participate in the web revolution. Self-trained in software but unable to get hired by top internet companies, he instead founded a startup where he built one of the first map routing applications on the web. From there he explored a vision of building internet-native payment systems, and eventually his x.com was acquired by rival PayPal. Newly enriched, he immediately used his funds to start Tesla and SpaceX, where he proceeded to excel at a world class level in three roles — corporate leadership, electric vehicle design, and rocket design — which no one would ever have hired him for based on certification and credentials. His second round of R&D businesses includes brain implant company Neuralink and tunnel-building company the Boring Company. Along the way he spun out Hyperloop, a new type of transportation system. And Tesla surprised many by becoming a leader in battery systems, heat transfer technology, manufacturing, and artificial intelligence.
Reviewing this record, it becomes clear that trying to put boundaries around Elon Musk’s area of competence is an inherently futile exercise. Still, the “specialist-as-expert” frame of analysis is a seductive cognitive heuristic that does not die easily. Wall Street analysts seem perplexed by his passionate management involvement in Twitter. Since he is not a media executive, he must not have expertise in the corporate direction of a media company — right?
Musk’s low-key secondary career(s)
Not so fast. We think of Elon Musk as a technology leader, but he is also a major social media influencer whose appearance on a podcast like Joe Rogan’s brings huge ratings. Tesla famously spends no money on advertising, in part because Elon adroitly uses his media savvy to keep his projects in the public eye. An early Twitter adopter, he has over 81 million followers on the platform. He probably has more experience using Twitter than most of the company’s own employees — including leadership like CEO Parag Agrawal — have. Twitter is his recreational activity and, in true expert generalist fashion, he is expert at that too.
His skills in corporate governance also stand up to scrutiny; he is already on other boards. As with many expert generalists, his “wheelhouse” is much larger than casual observers might assume.
Has Twitter became an existential threat to human society?
A more relevant question might be, “Why is addressing Twitter censorship this important to Elon?” Given his intense focus on running both SpaceX and Tesla, plus guiding Neuralink and the Boring Company, many commentators were surprised he would devote time to this effort.
Here it helps to understand that these efforts are not disconnected, but rather implementations of a single underlying idea. Elon’s companies all act to maximize the probability that the future of the human species is good. They do this primarily by reducing possible existential risks like climate change/environmental impact, planetary-scale extinction events, and AI out-competing humanity. Elon’s aggressive action to shift Twitter’s direction shows his concern that centralized control of information and perception has now risen to the level where it represents a direct existential risk itself and/or could block his other projects from success. The risk of widespread cognitive control through centralized control of information is an issue of particular urgency seen from the perspective of someone who owns a neural implant company. Expert generalists are always exploring for underlying connections and see connections that are not apparent to others.
Is your organization constraining its best competitive advantages?
Expert generalists can produce enormous value through insight. Yet most people — including most corporate leaders — are not expert generalists, and usually are not generalists at all. As a result, our systems of human capital management, from hiring to promotion to executive training, are generally built in ways that favor specialists to the detriment of generalists. Very rarely does the path to the CEO’s office run through the rocket designer role. Where generalists succeed it is often because they are able to secure sufficient autonomy to give themselves access to large enough problems to make a significant impact.
Is your organization set up to maximize the value of expert generalists? Do you even know who the best generalists within your organization are, or where to look for them? What path would they follow for success? If you are a corporate leader, it’s worth pondering these questions. Orit Gadiesh notes that she expects the competition for top-tier problem solvers and creative thinkers to become increasingly fierce as their competitive value is recognized. But it is not enough to simply have expert generalists on staff, you must create structures that give them sufficient flexibility to identify and engage with top problems. And if the concerns they see as top problems were not on your radar, you need to build mechanisms to capture diverse thinking and bring it to the leadership level. In this respect, Elon Musk’s move to influence Twitter serves as a great opportunity to reflect whether your organization is set up to attract, utilize, and benefit from expert generalists.
