The Magpie Mind

In his book ‘Range’, David Epstein lays out an alternative to the oft-touted ‘10,000 hours + deep expertise’ approach for crafting a career that has become our accepted wisdom. Instead what he describes is the embracing of broad learning, of continuous experimentation in different fields, of multi-disciplinary thinking and of the power that general... See more

“The challenge we all face is how to maintain the benefits of breadth, diverse experience, interdisciplinary thinking, and delayed concentration in a world that increasingly incentivizes, even demands, hyperspecialization”

For me strategy was about insatiable curiosity, falling down rabbit holes, connecting seemingly disparate dots, being that annoying kid in the backseat of the car on a long road trip who keeps asking ‘but, why?’, diving deep on subjects I’d never explored before, becoming a master of pointless trivia and therefore excellent in a pub quiz scenario.

B... See more

“Breadth of training predicts breadth of transfer. That is, the more contexts in which something is learned, the more the learner creates abstract models, and the less they rely on any particular example. Learners become better at applying their knowledge to a situation they’ve never seen before, which is the essence of creativity.”

To paraphrase David Epstein, to become better strategists and problem solvers we need to learn to “dance across disciplines”, to develop a "high tolerance for ambiguity" and to hone our "ability to connect disparate pieces of information in new ways", because “our greatest strength is the exact opposite of narrow specialization. It is the ability t... See more

polymaths are better problem solvers and that in many cases, breadth of experience surpasses depth.

As a strategist your mind is (hopefully) wired for curiosity, elastic in its ability to adapt and voracious in its appetite for learning and discovery. You will also be a natural at digging down to identify the real problem hiding behind the perceived one and you’ll be able to explore far and wide, when it comes to seeking out unexpected but brilli... See more

We need to reassess what we cultivate and what we celebrate. Breadth over depth. Multi-disciplinary over myopic focus. Ravenous curiosity over restrictive career paths. Embracing experimentation over punishing promiscuity.