Return of the Artisan?

For the last couple of decades at least, the path to a well paid career was pretty straightforward. Go to University (the bigger the brand the better), followed by a top MBA. Spend ten years working for a big name consultancy, and leave before your stamina drains and your dreams display as powerpoints to join a company as a C level exec.

It was pretty reliable and lucrative. It depended though on a degree of standardisation, that the models you learned and the problems to be solved didn't change too much, and that best practice stayed a reliable solution. The biggest challenge was the brands we collected on the way. Russell Group and Big Five worked.

That was changing before Coronavirus, as the happy hunting ground of complicated - the domain of experts, scalable good practice and repeatable solutions - was eroded by unpredictable, rapidly evolving complexity. Expertise in a single domain being eclipsed by expertise across several, and theory being eroded by hands on experience. It is p…