Chapter 8 - The Outsider Advantage
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The First Book: Range by David Epstein
David Epstein examined the world’s most successful athletes, artists, musicians, inventors, forecasters, and scientists. He discovered that in most fields—especially those that are complex and unpredictable—generalists, not specialists, are primed to excel. Generalists often find their path late, and they juggle many interests rather than focusing on one. They’re also more creative, more agile, and able to make connections their more specialized peers can’t see.
Who should read this?
All books have a thesis they attempt to answer, and Range's subtitle gives away the thesis right on the cover!
Why generalists succeed in a specialized world?
If the quote," jack of all trades, master of none." resonates with you, this book will fascinate you. Or if you are a curious person might berate themselves having too many interests. The book is about being broadly curious to solve problems more effectively.
You can get an offline PDF version of the blueprint to support our work here!
Chapter 8 - The Outsider Advantage
Hyper-specialized Workforce
This chapter opens with a discussion on how hyper-specialized the workforce has become. Take how I label myself; for example, I think of myself as mostly an engineer if asked, but if I have to say my degree, it's electronics engineering technology. This goes for almost every field from chemistry, doctors, accounting. Everything gets splintered into an ever more niche category. Though specialization itself is not a problem exactly it does come with disadvantages.
Enter a unique company InnoCentive; the entire company is based around getting outside help to find solutions to problems that stump those too close to the problem. Framing the problem is the key here. The seeker must frame the challenge in as broad terms as possible. This way, it maximizes the reach beyond the domain in which the problem has arisen.
Alph Bingham coined a term called "outside-in" thinking: finding solutions in experience far outside the focus area.
An example of this is the birth of canning food, and it comes from an unlikely source. In 1795, Napoleon wanted to improve food preservation and offered a reward for research. Of all the great minds of the time, a Parisian foodie and confectioner Nicolas Appert found a solution. He beat out the scientific minds of the time due to his broad knowledge within the time's food industry. He placed food inside thick bottles of champagne and sealed them in boiling water for hours. This was roughly 60 years before pasteurization was discovered.
The critical message of InnovCentive and stories like Appert is to not discount past work experience. When you are far enough removed from a problem, new angles open up to you that those who are specialized can't see.
The Einstellung Effect
The Einstellung effect is the tendency of problem solvers to employ familiar methods even if better ones are available
We've all been in a situation like this before. Be it at work, sports, or even when learning something on a program. When you are teaching yourself something, it takes a lot of effort to deprogram yourself to solve a problem in a new way. Training a dog the same trick a different way is easier said than done.
One way to think of specialization is like Russian nesting dolls. As the focus gets narrower, so do the tools that are used to solve that problem. It reminds me of the metaphor missing the forest because you are looking at the tree. Then your look at the roots, and then you're looking at a single system branch. Before long, you're deep in the root world that you forget that you're in the forest altogether and that you can explain the system in more ways than root think. (Probably lousy analogy, but first thought).
One of my favorite quotes in this chapter comes from Pedro Domingos, "Knowledge is a double-edged sword. It allows you to do some things, but it also make blind to other things that you could do."
The real issue with a specialization is the amount of time it takes for someone to reach the cutting edge. If you want to get a Ph.D. in any field, you're looking for another decade of school post-high school. If you start college at 18, you're lucky to be starting your career at 28 and probably another five years of cutting your teeth before you get on exploring what you want. That puts you at 33. That's a long time to get yourself set up. There's no doubt we need these specialists. Still, the book's hidden fruit and premise are how to leverage what the specialists have discovered to solve problems elsewhere or use knowledge outside their hyper-specialized view to help them make progress?
Undiscovered Public Knowledge
A program called Arrowsmith system. Created by Don Swanson to tap into what he called "undiscovered public knowledge."
Here's an example of an outside advantage, enter Jill Viles. I'll paraphrase the key points here, but David wrote an article on this piece here. Jill is a muscular dystrophy patient who found a genetic connection between herself and Priscilla Lopes-Schliep. Looking at the photos of them side by side, they couldn't look more dissimilar.
Doing research Jill came across a rare disease called partial lipodystrophy, which causes fat on limbs to disappear, leaving veins and muscles shrink-wrapped to the skin. She found out that they both have the same mutation, but Jill's version causes fat and muscle loss, where Priscilla only lost fat. This discovery was a critical intervention that will probably help prolong Priscilla's career by having a deeper understanding of physiology.
What's the take-home here? Since we know that getting to the forefront requires an ever-increasing amount of time, what is left in its wake useful knowledge is ready to be used in a new way. It's not about being the first to discover something but using the same expertise unexpectedly.
