The expert-generalists
APHRASE I would hear often enough growing up was “Jack of all trades, Prince of nothing” or “Master of None.” It is meant to encourage people to focus on and gain deep expertise in certain fewer things rather than dabbling on several things on a shallow level.
I was always the opposite, always open to trying out new things, be it sports, academic interests, or extracurricular activities. A summer of swimming, a year of gymnastics, short courses on programming, speed reading,
- guages of business, and interna- tional arbitration, are all a few of the multitude of things that make me a ‘prince of nothing.’
Many would say that quite a few of those endeavors are now futile skills in my profession as a lawyer. I partially agree, but perhaps surprisingly, it is in fact the acting workshops that best contributed to my practice, as speaking in front of a crowd. It is a veritable fact that what one learns through various experiences can contribute to one’s overall development, regardless of how outlandishly illogical the connection may be.
By an exceptional twist of fate, many of today’s greatest gamechangers are, in fact, “jacks of all trades,” or as contemporarily described, are “expert-generalists,” a term coined by Orit Gadiesh, chairman of Bain & Company. Expert-generalists are people who study broadly in varied fields, with a profound understanding and comprehension that allows them to connect principles in their core expertise. Expert-generalists have a curiosity that enables them to amass proficiency in many different disciplines and call upon this mass of knowledge in bridging gaps between those disciplines.
For instance, Nobel laureate for Physics Richard Feynman enjoyed a deeply rooted interest in literature and art so that peers described him as having artistic insights on physics.
For me, the exemplar for the modern expert-generalist is Elon Musk, who is among the wealthiest and most powerful people on the planet. After founding X.com, which later became PayPal, he sold his equity and founded or invested in companies that are as diverse as they come. Today, he is into space exploration with SpaceX, is CEO and product architect of Tesla, and is exploring - cial intelligence and implanting computers in the brain with OpenAI and Neuralink, respectively.
Of course, one could argue that these expert-generalists are of a breed on their own, sui generis, in legal parlance. After all, they are multitalented individuals with the mental acuity to learn and understand principles of various disciplines.
Education has played a divergent impact on many expertgeneralists. Some embraced it, while others couldn’t be both - crosoft founder Bill Gates, who was studying pre- law, mixed with math and computer science courses in Harvard, dropped out after two years. Mark Zuckerberg was studying psychology and computer science also at Harvard, and left to focus on a website that would become Facebook. Apple’s legendary founder Steve Jobs