The New Generalist
Why it is important not to discard the industrial age concepts of specialisation but add generalisation for new value.
A few years back, while I was tossing ideas, I stumbled upon this brilliant sketch by Dave Gray of xplane.com.
A GENERALIST approach looks broadly across disciplines and is most suited to defining the problem OR envisioning the goal.
A SPECIALIST approach looks deeply within a discipline and is best suited to solving the problem OR designing a solution.
Everything about the future looks wrong when you see it through the lens of the past. The world we grew up in placed a high premium on specialization; if you wanted to be a doctor, you had to become a surgeon in a specific ‘system’; if you were an engineer, you had to get yourself a Masters degree, and so on. People went to specialists to get expert solutions to their physical, business and life problems. And we still do.
So are we trying to foretell the death of specialisations? Not really. Only that more and more specialization is not going to help solve the problems we envisage today and tomorrow.
- The Age of Connections needs Generalists — Excellent article by my friend Arnold Beekes
- Why We Can’t Build A Team of Machines — 2008
