All Hail the Generalist

Rise of the Generalist Sources

1. “Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World,” David Epstein, 2019.


2. “The Skillful Corporation,” McKinsey Quarterly, Five Fifty, 2018.


3. “The Fastest Path to the CEO Job, According to a 10-Year Study,” Elena Lytkina Botelho, Kim Rosenkoetter Powell, and Nicole Wong, Harvard Business Review, January 31, 2018.


4. “Harv

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We theorized that the benefits of being a generalist are strongest in fields with a slower pace of change. In these fields (think oil and gas, mining), it might be harder for specialists to come up with new ideas and identify new opportunities, while generalists may be able to find inspiration from other areas. We also theorized that the situation ... See more

Management psychologist Philip Tetlock concludes from his research that there is an inverse relationship between the best scientific indicators of good judgement and single-minded specialisation. Drawing from Isaiah Berlin's ‘fox and the hedgehog’ analogy, he contends that the fox – the thinker who knows many little things, draws from an eclectic a

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As technology becomes a commodity with the democratization of information, it’s the big-picture generalists who will predict, innovate, and rise to power fastest.

Organizations, industries, and the economy need both generalists and specialists. And when we lack the right balance, it creates problems.

Generalists, with their diverse skills, adaptability, and ethical awareness, are at the vanguard of this new epoch. They aren’t just visionaries but also implementers, merging AI-generated efficiency with human creativity and ethical discernment.