Specialists Kill Innovation

Organisations want innovation

I’m not sure that statement is strictly true. Organisations say they want innovation, but the status quo is a very comfortable, unthreatening place to be.

Organisations need innovation

Maybe that is more realistic. If you don’t evolve and adapt whilst those around you are, then you are unlikely to survive.

Innovation comes from mixing unrelated ideas

That is a truism. If you mix related ideas, maybe tomato sauce and pasta, with an olive or two, you may well create something good, but it won’t be innovative. Plenty of others will see the same opportunities and create the same ideas.

Mixing unrelated ideas however brought you:

• The cyclone vacuum
• The Walkman
• Soap powder

Generalists encounter unrelated ideas

If you want innovation, then people who have worked across a range of industries and disciplines are all important. Innovation comes from generalisation. The more of a generalist you are, the more unrelated ideas you will encounter and the more likely you are to combine them.

But organisations reward specialists

If you want to go far in your career then the trick is to specialise:

• First become an accountant
• Then become a tax accountant
• Then become a corporate tax accountant
• Then become an E.U. corporate tax accountant

There isn’t a specialist E.U. corporate tax accountant in the country who isn’t being very well rewarded.

Few of the big accountancy firms are asking their EU corporate tax accountants to broaden their experience and move into their fraud, life sciences or technology practices. Why would they? It is counter intuitive.

Specialists kill generalists

You can’t be both. You have to chose to be one, or the other.

If you accept the argument that innovation comes from generalists then specialists must be killing innovation as well.

So if you want innovation…

And aren’t just giving it lip service in the hope of an easy life, you have to nurture your generalists. No matter how uncomfortable that feels.

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