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Dear community members,

Tennis star Roger Federer dabbled in basketball, handball, skiing, wrestling, swimming, table tennis and skateboarding while growing up. When he began to gravitate towards tennis, his parents cautioned him against taking the sport too seriously. Essentially, when they discovered his love for sports, they encouraged him to have what author Dave Epstein calls “sampling period", which includes low risk experiments meant to organically discover what one loves doing and wants to succeed in.

Golf player Tiger Woods, on the other hand, specialized under his father’s tutelage before turning three. Wood’s learning path of early specialization has become the default template for schools and colleges who want to prime students for excellence.

Introducing the Deep-Generalist Fellowship

Even in the most modern workplaces, a disproportionate emphasis is paid on having narrow skills that are marketable. While there is nothing wrong having an area of focus, one should be mindful of the perils of early specialization.

There are three key reason for that.

1. First, we tend to specialize without knowing why. More than 80% of people work in areas that have nothing to do with their field of study. In India, for example, most students first graduate from courses like engineering and then figure out what they want to do with their lives. Spending four years of one’s life getting deep into a subject one doesn’t particularly care about is a colossal waste of time, energy and money

2. Second, it hinders lateral thinking, a problem-solving approach that draws upon seemingly disparate concepts and domains. Most innovators are lateral thinkers. Their lateral thinking is a direct result of combining different strands of thoughts and learning from different contexts. Leonardo Da Vinci combined art and engineering, Steve Jobs built upon the interconnectedness of design, fashion and technology, and Richard Feynman, a Nobel laureate in physics, is known to draw upon references from music.

3. Third, people with a narrow set of skills tend to approach every problem through the same lens. This not only ignores loopholes in one’s hypothesis but also amplifies biases. As investor Charlie Munger puts it, “To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

If early specialization can backfire, should we all snack on an array of ideas, insights and interests? No.

The future belongs to deep generalists, a term popularized by JotForm CEO Aytekin Tank. These are people who combine two or more diverse domains and integrate them into something defensible and unique.

In the 21st century, with the mainstreaming of automation and artificial intelligence (AI), some jobs will become automated and some, redundant. Even highly trained professionals, radiologists, traders, programmers, might lose their jobs to algorithms if they are over-reliant on their narrow set of specialized skills.

On the other hand, deep generalists will not only keep their jobs but also be able to demand a premium for what they bring to the table. These are the professionals who will push the boundaries for creativity and innovation in the AI era. Their competitive advantage will propel them to learn, unlearn and develop innovative solutions consistently.

How does the fellowship work?

In the age of widespread automation, learning and unlearning is a lifelong pursuit. Tools and technologies will constantly change. While this might unsettle those with a narrow set of skills, it will empower deep generalists to create new opportunities they have nurtured over years of building lateral thinking and conducting repeated experiments to figure how they want to contribute to the changing world around.

As a part of this fellowship, you will spend8-12 hours of engagement very week for three weeks in -

1. Live sessions hosted by top 0.1% professionals

2. Peer-learning groups

3. 1:1 mentoring sessions

We are need-blind!

If you know someone who will benefit from Network Capital and Deep-Generalist Fellowship, refer them to us here. If they join, you get $50, no strings attached.

If you want to join the fellowship but are unable to afford it, apply for financial aid and we will help you with a scholarship! If you have any questions, write to us!

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💝 If you want to learn how to navigate the Network Capital ecosystem, please read this article.

✍🏼 Read our founder Utkarsh Amitabh’s Harvard Business Review articles here Building Your Category of One, Should You Choose Passion Over Paycheck, How to Make Envy Work for You?, and The Right Way to Make a Big Career Transition

💞 Read our founder Utkarsh Amitabh’s book Seductive Illusion of Hard Work. The foreword written by Klaus Schwab, the founder of World Economic Forum.