Hyper-specialization
Francois over at Emergence Marketing has a recent post about how hyper-specialization is not always the right thing to do. Why? For two reasons, he says: 1) "most breakthrough innovations happen not at one level of specialization but...at the confluence of multiple disciplines," and 2) "hyper specialists...do not understand what happens in adjacent spaces." Both great points. I would nikpik with the first one and say that it is ideas, not innovations, that come of any disciplinary confluence. Innovations are, almost by necessity, the result of specialization. Whatever the wording, the key lesson, I think, is that a generalist perspective balances, complements and is every bit as valuable as a specialist one.
(via Innovation Tools and augustdiva)