
Specialization still plays a role & creates opportunities.
The more constrained and repetitive a challenge, the more likely it will be automated, while great rewards will accrue to those who can take conceptual knowledge from one problem or domain and apply it in an entirely new one.”Ģ. Faced with any problem they had not directly experienced before, the remote villagers were completely lost.
And that is what a rapidly changing, wicked world demands-conceptual reasoning skills that can connect new ideas and work across contexts.
“They were perfectly capable of learning from experience, but failed at learning without experience. “ In the wicked world, with ill-defined challenges and few rigid rules, range can be a life hack.”. But those are poor models of most things humans want to learn.” “When we know the rules and answers, and they don’t change over time-chess, golf, playing classical music ( kind world)-an argument can be made for savant-like hyper-specialized practice from day one. The problem is that we often expect the hyper-specialist, because of their expertise in a narrow area, to magically be able to extend their skill to wicked problems. Facing kind problems, narrow specialization can be remarkably efficient. “ Facing uncertain environments and wicked problems, breadth of experience is invaluable. Wicked problems (better for generalists): Uncertain environments, ill-defined challenges, few rules, rapidly changing, etc. Kind problems (better for specialists): Certain environments, specific challenges, rigid rules, unchanging, etc. The world has kind problems & wicked problems.