Any institution that thrives on curiosity and exploration must embrace the role of the edge case.

These positions require a more generalist perspective, as well an organization that is willing to embrace an outlier as a legitimate role.

We must have the possibility of following our curiosity and what seems interesting, even when it might be different from the core functions of the organization

In the face of this, organizations can become overly narrow, unable to look at the broader landscape of ideas or simply engage in a sense of play. Therefore, there is a need for organizations to create a space for more undirectedness, which involves thinking along longer time horizons and creating room for randomness and optionality.

In many organizations, we can become bogged down by the short-term and the actions with instrumental value: what does this task require and what will it get us? Or each employee simply becomes so busy or specialized that they do not have the bandwidth to explore more broadly at an individual level.

I think these roles point to something a bit broader: the need for more generalist, or at least outlier, roles in organizations.

even beyond research, there are a number of such more “exceptional” types of roles in the venture world. For about a year now, I’ve been tracking such roles that currently exist or once existed, and have come across a pretty broad set of titles: design partner, data scientist in residence, chief scientist, writer in residence, philosopher in... See more