Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

Wernher von Braun, who led the Marshall Space Flight Center’s development of the rocket that propelled the moon mission, balanced NASA’s rigid process with an informal, individualistic culture that encouraged constant dissent and cross-boundary communication. Von Braun started “Monday Notes”: every week engineers submitted a single page of notes on

Despite the bird’s-eye evidence, cardiologists who specialize in using that tool reported that they simply cannot believe that stenting doesn’t work, even when their compensation was not tied to performing the procedure. Being told to stop using stents was like being told to forget you are an interventional cardiologist. The instinct, often well-me

A 2016 analysis of ten thousand researchers’ careers determined that there is no standard relationship between experience and contribution; an individual’s most impactful paper was as likely to be their first as their second, their tenth, or their last. (Researchers did tend to publish more frequently at younger ages, though.)

Ogas uses the shorthand “standardization covenant” for the cultural notion that it is rational to trade a winding path of self-exploration for a rigid goal with a head start because it ensures stability. “The people we study who are fulfilled do pursue a long-term goal, but they only formulate it after a period of discovery,” he told me. “Obviously

Labor economist Kirabo Jackson has demonstrated that even the dreaded administrative headache known as “teacher turnover” captures the value of informed switching. He found that teachers are more effective at improving student performance after they switch to a new school, and that the effect is not explained by switching to higher-achieving school

Around that same time, an influential book on expert judgment was published that Kahneman told me impressed him “enormously.” It was a wide-ranging review of research that rocked psychology because it showed experience simply did not create skill in a wide range of real-world scenarios, from college administrators assessing student potential to psy