The curious generalist blends ideas and practices from different domains and sources to generate new insights that have the potential to upend existing beliefs, patterns, assumptions and, as a result, create significant change or solve entrenched problems. A core challenge of developing knowledge and experience from a variety of disciplines is in finding the spaces where that is valued; too often we seek an expert to solve our problems and, as I’ve written about before, experts come backed with specific qualifications, career paths and industry bodies. We might also find it harder to land our ideas without such symbols of legitimacy as without them ideas can be easier to dismiss. And as with every new idea or solution timing matters.
Sometimes the right ideas brought into the wrong context or at the wrong time can have disruptive consequences for all involved. This is best illustrated by generalist Alfred Wegener(1) who published a theory in 1912 that would lead him to become famous, though not as he would have wanted. He was “vilified and, most cruelly, denied his deserved academic reward. And when he died, at the very early age of fifty, he was a figure of notoriety and ridicule”(2). What on earth was the theory that demanded such an extreme reaction by his fellow academics? His continental drift(3) hypothesis that the continents once formed a single land mass – which he called Pangaea. It took until the 1960s for it to become an accepted theory in geology.
A scientists’ task is to add to the knowledge and understanding we have of the world. Their insights and proofs enable the edifice of scientific proof to be constructed. Yet we know that once such a position has been established as the best fit explanation for the given phenomena at a particular point in time, it can be incredibly difficult to put forth a new hypothesis. Even given the recognition that all the potential explanations for particular phenomena can’t all be tested. There are lots of reasons for this, as there are in any arena where those who are well-served by the status quo are not only reluctant to see it change, but often actively fight it – I’ve written before about this ‘immune response’.
Too many careers and interests are vested in the current way of thinking and the current explanations, as Alfred Wegener found out to his cost. Simon Winchester continues his story: “The rest of the academic community was implacably hostile, almost to a man. ‘Utter, damned rot!’ said the president of the American Philosophical Society. ‘If we are to believe this hypothesis we must forget everything we learned in the last seventy years and start all over again,’ remarked Thomas Chamberlin, a towering figure in American geology, on hearing Wegener speak in New York in 1923. ‘Anyone who valued his reputation for scientific sanity,’ said a British geologist, at the same time, when Wegener’s ideas were being given wide airing, ‘would never dare support such a theory.’
Perhaps Wegener’s biggest challenge as a generalist was that he wasn’t seen as an expert by the acknowledged experts in the field of Geology. But he was able to generate these ideas because of his breadth of knowledge from across disciplines and, in all likelihood, his lack of conditioning to the accepted scientific authodoxy. It seems to me that a lesson from Wegener’s experience is that we should hold our current ‘best fit’ explanations – and expertise – lightly so that we are ready to adjust them in the light of new evidence.
This may mean we are better able to entertain new possibilities, making the experience of those coming up with them a little less like that of Wegener and helping advance our understanding of things – from understanding environmental phenomena to organisational management to tackling entrenched social problems – more quickly. It took until 1965 for the scientific community to catch up with his ideas and generate the proof that his continental drift hypothesis – now the science of plate tectonics – was indeed correct. Sure, we must invite robust challenge to our ideas, but this is made harder still the more vested others are in a given explanation or situation.
The generalist is a crucial part of such an endeavour; their value is in their ability to join ideas and insights from different domains when collaborating with specialists who have developed a deep expertise in their field. Generalists may just provide the key that unlocks a critical challenge or problem in a business or community.
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Wegener
(2) Winchester, Simon. Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded. Penguin
Ian Burbidge. 
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