Jon Reed on Twitter
“2016 enterprise skills debate - specialist or generalist? https://t.co/p6xePANQDK -> dejavu convos @vijayasankarv, @sap_jarret @applebyj :)”
Do It Better
Specialist, generalist or polymath?
The debate about 2016 skills needs needs further amplification. Becoming a polymath will be a requirement that taxes those who are specialists.
multipath
Definition, Synonyms, Translations of multipath by The Free Dictionary
How to think like a Renaissance man — or woman
Are you a polymath, too?
Praise for the specialist and disdain of the generalist
We often hear, somewhat disparagingly the phrase: “Jack of all trades, master of none.” This maxim seems to be a commonality across multiple languages and cultures. For example, the Chinese also warn: “Equipped with knives all over, yet none is sharp.”
Writer Robert Twigger believes that this faulty way of thinking about specialization versus applied generalized mastery is due to a phenomenon in which he coined the word monopath.
monopath. It means a person with a narrow mind, a one-track brain, a bore, a super-specialist, an expert with no other interests — in other words, the role-model of choice in the Western world.”
Looking back at those wondrous higher types of antiquities and the Renaissance, we begin to see many trends. A polymath is someone who’s expertise flows like a flood, encompassing and saturating any field it comes across. 15th century polymath Leon Battista Alberti once wrote that a man can do anything that he wills. The ideal of perfection during the Renaissance was the master of all.
This great higher ideal of a human excelled in artistic, intellectual and even physical activities. Nothing was out of bounds for them. While all of this might conjure up imagery of the greats like Michelangelo, Goethe, or some other Faustian archetype… the polymath is something we can all subscribe to in some fashion.
Polymaths in a way embody the childish curiosity made manifest into experience and doing.
“I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.” – Leonardo da Vinci
Question all established schools of thought and start from the beginning.
Don’t limit yourself to only studying one minute slice of life.
Learning is a never ending process that doesn’t occur over a few days or weeks. It is a lifelong pursuit.
Always record your thoughts in some manner.
Whisking yourself away into the ancient halls of unbounded inquiry will not hinder your goals in life, they will instead facilitate you to new heights of greatness.
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Master-General of the Ordnance - Wikipedia
Polymath - Wikipedia
A polymath is an individual whose knowledge spans a substantial number of subjects, known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems.
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Generalist and specialist species - Wikipedia
A generalist species is able to thrive in a wide variety of environmental conditions and can make use of a variety of different resources (for example, a heterotroph with a varied diet). A specialist species can thrive only in a narrow range of environmental conditions or has a limited diet. Most organisms do not all fit neatly into either group, however. Some species are highly specialized (the most extreme case being monophagous, eating one specific type of food), others less so, and some can tolerate many different environments. In other words, there is a continuum from highly specialized to broadly generalist species.
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