Monday, June 4, 2012

All Hail the Generalist - Vikram Mansharamani - Harvard Business Review

All Hail the Generalist - Vikram Mansharamani - Harvard Business Review

All Hail the Generalist

We have become a society of specialists. Business thinkers point to "domain expertise" as an enduring source of advantage in today's competitive environment. The logic is straightforward: learn more about your function, acquire "expert" status, and you'll go further in your career.

But what if this approach is no longer valid? Corporations around the world have come to value expertise, and in so doing, have created a collection of individuals studying bark. There are many who have deeply studied its nooks, grooves, coloration, and texture. Few have developed the understanding that the bark is merely the outermost layer of a tree. Fewer still understand the tree is embedded in a forest....

For various reasons, though, the specialist era is waning. The future may belong to the generalist. Why's that? To begin, our highly interconnected and global economy means that seemingly unrelated developments can affect each other. Consider the Miami condo market, which has rebounded quite nicely since 2008 on the back of strong demand from Latin American buyers. But perhaps a slowdown in China, which can take away the "bid" for certain industrial commodities, might adversely affect many of the Latin American extraction-based companies, countries, and economies. How many real estate professionals in Miami are closely watching Chinese economic developments?

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