Generalists in an age of Specialists?

Firstly, we have to determine what we mean by Generalists. They are not just "non specialists", or those with a varied background. Just as Specialists develop through "deliberate practice", so Generalists develop through what I might term deliberate variety - the deliberate accumulation of varied experiences that will later interlink to create insight. To make the leap between disciplines.

Deliberate practice is best known in relatively narrow fields with clearly defined boundaries - most sports and many professions where what is required is to develop perfection in a limited range of moves through constantly stretching ourselves against ever more challenging goals. Incremental improvement down a fairly linear path.

Generalists however develop the ability to dance between disciplines. To recognise when techniques or ideas from one area might be applied in another. One example from innovation is exaption - an example being how the wine press was adapted to invent early moveable type prin…