As we are driven by genuine interest to curiosity and that leads to learning, inevitably we will widen out our knowledge and experience base.

Actually being a generalist (good at a lot) is sort of being a specialist. Seth Godin uses the idea of a Swiss Army knife. It does a lot of different things and therefore is specific.

This learning builds in flexibility. Nimbleness. Ability to respond “no problem” with most requests.

As knowledge sharing increases and organizations become more decentralized, it will be less important to be singly specific. It’ll be more important that we all become generally specific. Good at a lot so we can take the knowledge easily accessible and find a way to apply it effectively.

It’s less about what you have and more how you apply knowledge or information in general.

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Inspired by Seth Godin Akimbo podcast episode “Go Invent Something” Q and A at the end.

Data I found through Harvard Business Review which points to generalist being more able to apply knowledge than specialists.