: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World”
We need both focused frogs and visionary birds. Birds fly high in the air and survey broad vistas of mathematics out to the far horizon. They delight in concepts that unify our thinking and bring together diverse problems from different parts of the landscape. Frogs live in the mud below and see only the flowers that grow nearby. They delight in the details of particular objects, and they solve problems one at a time.
It is stupid to claim that birds are better than frogs because they see farther, or that frogs are better than birds because they see deeper.
With the increasing velocity of information, being a specialist is less impactful; the specialist’s work is well communicated, and it’s up to the polymaths to stitch the research together in interesting ways.
Having T-Shaped knowledge is critical, because you can go to the I-shaped people for help.
Being a master T-Shaped person would result in being a pi shaped person.