Generalization:

1> having a generalist knowledge has diversified their opportunities by allowing them
to adapt and apply their knowledge into a variety of situations.

2> Generalization is a good thing. When you know a lot of nonspecific stuff about something,
you are more likely to find a place in the world. If you are so specific that only one or two
places will know what you are about and accept you, it makes life extremely hard.

3> It's ALWAYS better to know a lot - knowledge is power, after all! With the rapid rate of social
change we face nowadays, it's always better to be able to grow & shift with the culture we live
in. It's all according to where your life takes you.

4>
By generalizing, you become the cross discipline engineer. You know about a lot of stuff
but maybe not in depth across all areas. A lot of people can do what you do, so now you
become a commodity for a company-- they could hold leverage against you that there are
more people out there that could do your job... less job security, less pay.

Pros
• The more possibilities you have for making income, the less you will feel hard economic times.
Then again, if your area of generalization is too vague, you may become too expendable and be the
first in line for company layoffs.
• To be a generalist often means you keep learning new complementary skills. This continues
to build a good base of employability, in addition to conquering the long-term boredom factor.
• Your increased range of employability also means you have greater chances of being employed
closer to home than a specialist might. You will save money on transportation and other expenses that
a specialist might bear (even with a higher income that might not cover these adjustments).

Cons
• Employers might not know how best to place you in their organization if your skills are too
spread out. They may not view you as reliable or tenacious enough with any one job or skill set to be
worth hiring.
• Without a solid idea of what you do, you may find yourself searching, both for personal
identity as well as groping in the dark for what to do next, and for what type of employer you’ll work for
next.
• Less focused job searches are more difficult to endure.

Benefits of generalization
1. You are more commercial
It’s a simple concept: the more skills you have in your design arsenal, the more commercially
attractive you become. This is especially appealing to small businesses, which don’t necessarily have
the resources to hire a different person for every job.
“A designer’s ability to wear multiple hats can and will be what sets them apart from candidates
who do one thing exceedingly well,” says Carl Vervisch, creative director at Social Forces, a digital
advertising agency based in Tampa, Fla.
He adds: “At the end of the day, it comes down to filling the needs of the business, and the applicant
who fills more needs has a major advantage.”

2. You see the big picture

Graphic design is an intricate process. In order to create the best possible design, it helps to have a
more abstract understanding of all facets of the industry and how they fit together.

“Coming up with a design is one thing. Delivering that idea is something entirely different,” says
Laurent Bourscheidt, creative director at STC Associates. He says it’s beneficial to have sufficient
knowledge in multiple areas to solve a design challenge.
So rather than merely focusing on the design of a single piece, it’s important to be aware of how that
piece fits into the client’s overall objectives.

“Every part of the design process today is intertwined,” says Bourscheidt. He goes on to say that it
can be detrimental for a designer to disregard a piece of the larger puzzle because it shows they’re
not in tune with the overall mission.

3. You’re a one-stop shop

As a jack-of-all-trades, you have the opportunity to turn one gig into many more, especially when
working with smaller businesses. If you impress your client with your original design, you may be able
to offer more than they originally thought they needed.

This is exactly how Bill Weber, owner of Bill Weber Studios, operates his business. He says if a
company asks him to design new imagery for their building and he notices they have a lousy logo,
he’ll offer to redesign it for them.
Then, if the company loves the sign and logo, they might decide they’d like to expand their request to
include informational signs and brochures. They may even decide to revamp their website.

Regardless of how much or how little extra work they commission, as a generalist, you’re able to take
it all on.

Example:

• Leonardo da Vinci was able to attain mastery in science, anatomy and engineering along with
his drawing and painting. I think he'd probably consider himself a generalist.

• The generalist method usually works for individual, anaerobic sports, such as skiing, tennis,
fencing etc.

SPECIALISATION:
1. By specializing in something, you guarantee a small pool of people are
able to perform what you do and thus it could be generally agreed on that,
higher pay and job security, would not be unrealistic. However, what
happens when that niche field becomes obsolete and that's all you know?
2. specializing leads to career boredom, limits job options,
and can ultimately do yourself out of a job if your area of
specialty becomes obsolete.
 3. And naturally specialist will always be needed. And we are looking for a good
balance between the specialist and the "creative Thinkers" in a company.

Specialization
Pros
• You get higher wages for having specific knowledge.
• You are a desirable employee in your area of expertise.
• If you specialize enough, you can become a leading expert in demand for satisfying ground-
breaking projects or additional work on the side that complements your job.

Cons
• You have less job security if your area of specialty becomes obsolete.
• Many areas of specialty require a university degree or educational certification of sorts (which
is not a problem per se, but might financially — or otherwise — be a stretch to achieve).
• If you are too specialized, the company can’t use you for other tasks or jobs, thus decreasing
your overall flexibility as an employee.
• Too much time working at your specific area of specialty can lead to career boredom.

Benefits of specialization
1. You know what works and what doesn’t
Designers who specialize in a single area have probably gained a comprehensive understanding of
their chosen discipline. People who specialize in an area, design or field tend to know what works and
what doesn’t, says book and ebook designer Becky Blanton.

Blanton says she much prefers hiring specialists for each step in the production process.

“When I get a book, I send the cover to my cover designer,” she says. “I send
illustrations to my illustrator and I send slides to my slide guy,”

Because she is so focused on the content, Blanton relies on specialists to see the “angles and
images” that she may overlook.

2. You are a desirable commodity

By being a specialist, you are positioning yourself as an expert in your discipline. As long as you have
portfolio pieces that speak to your strengths, being a specialist increases your stock in the graphic
design field.

“Expertise makes it a lot easier to land freelance work or get a job,” says Hyper Modern
Consulting owner Thursday Bram. “Everyone wants to hire the best when given the opportunity to do
so.”

3. You can name your price

Much like an orthopedic surgeon or a cardiologist, the more one is viewed as an expert in their field,
the more they can charge for their services, says Jay Rogers, owner of Jayro Design & Illustration.
“Clients and employers rarely risk their money on people who don't show work applicable to them,”
Rogers says. “They want to understand exactly how a designer fits and what value they will bring to
the project or company. People who specialize make that leap easier for clients and employers”

So have you decided which side you stand on in the generalist vs. specialist debate? It’s clear both
alternatives have their place in the field, so there is no wrong answer. It all comes down to what suits
you best.

If you see yourself working with a small business in a variety of mediums, then generalization might
be a great fit. If you’d rather work for a large organization investing all your energy into a single
expertise, specialization might be right up your alley.

Whichever you choose, the important thing is to commit to one side or the other. If you get too
comfortable in that space-in-between, you run the risk of falling through the cracks.

Example

Everywhere I look, I see organizations that have implemented either horizontal (essentially) cross-
functional teams with passive management, or a traditional vertical hierarchy. Perhaps fields other
than defense and military have adopted a true horizontal or boundaryless structure with cross-
functional team composed of generalists.

I personally am opposed to moving toward the generalists. It wouldn't be possible to create an

organization that cares with generalists; e.g. specialist jobs would be eliminated to make
way for the generalists that would mind for all tasks the specialists previously
did. Could this phenomenon be somehow compared with the elimination of jobs
due to technology?

Individualism would also be a factor in this, especially in a capitalist system. Take your drinking water
for example. With a generalist, there is more of a risk for a disgruntled employee to dirty the drinking
water for the entire organization--perhaps ultimately destroying their potential for public interface.

Perhaps it's not possible for organizations to create systems that care in an capitalist economy.
Perhaps the socialist or communist economic organizations must be considered when thinking in
terms of equality and eliminating individualism. Maybe even the organizational behavior and culture
standards could be evaluated.

• Specialization is preferred for most of the team sports. So when you mention baseball
with any other team sport it does not work. It is always either or! However, if you were a
tennis player, track and field, swimming etc. would help in gaining much needed anaerobic
endurance. I hope this answered your question. As much as you try to hang on to the notion
of multi-sport participation the more you take away from the one you truly love. You must
pick that ONE.
• If I need my car's engine fixed, I go to a mechanic who specializes in my engine. We need
specialists for sure. If I want a large robotics project to be successful, I don't go and get the
best mechanical engineer I can to oversee the programmers, electrical folks, etc. I get someone
with a good general knowledge of all areas needed. They usually will have a specialty, but
their personality led them to contemplate the other fields and attain some level of mastery and
 experience in each.
• Some career options require specializing right off the bat. For example to be a
medical doctor is considered to be a specialty of sorts, but even within the range
of medicine, there are hundreds of areas of specialty you can further explore.

CONCLUSION:

So, what I'm just trying to say is: When there are more creative thinkers
in a company, with stronger empathic abilities, it might have a positive
effect. (I'm not looking for perfect, but for "best intentions.)

• what about being a “generalizing specialist”? As the best of both worlds, a

generalizing specialist is a jack-of-all-trades and master of a few. They beat out
generalists for their deeper breadth of knowledge, and beat out specialists for
having more range and flexibility, and a better working knowledge of how it all
fits together.

• useless at most of the tasks performed by my company, but I need to know enough about a

wide range of topics critical to the running of the company.In that sense, an executive is like

an entrepreneur, I suppose. If you have ambitions in the general management direction, you

must have specialized knowledge to fulfill your current role, but must also work on developing

your general understanding of business topics.

• You could say a generalizing specialist is a true specialist. One who is open to new ways of
excelling make a huge salary or be unemployed.

• . Generalization is less rewarding but less risky. It makes you more employable because it
increases employment options. But it limits you to average pay.

• The volatility of the modern economy necessitates the generalist approach in much the same
way you need to diversify your investments.
• It is my personal belief that both the generalist and the specialist will come out at the same
place in the end though the specialist will have taken a much wilder economic ride. The key
for generalists is to not envy the specialists during the fat years. It always reverts to the mean.
SOME EXAMPLES:

Specialization vs. Generalization in Education

Everywhere we turn today we see specialization. The most respected and well paid doctors and
dentists are often those who perform just a few procedures. Many attorneys cover just one area of
law. Even kids are specializing in how they play! With the spread of “travel teams” whose seasons
are often more than six months per year, young athletes, starting at the age of 8 or so, are now
forced to choose one or two sports at the expense of all others.
Specialization produces excellence—but only within a narrow range of endeavor. We have become a
society where even the narrowest of activities is treated as a sport with its own heroes. Repetition
and mastery of a very specific activity is now the model of stardom. But even Adam Smith, the
famous economist who advocated the division of labor in society, admitted that the system had a
major drawback:

The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations has no occasion to exert
his understanding, or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties
which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes
as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. (Adam Smith, The Wealth
of Nations, 1776, Book 5, Part III, Chapter II)

Smith never solved this riddle: How to get all the material advantages of specialization while
avoiding its intellectual pitfalls? But it’s clear that he saw educational reform as the best option—
his critique of the division of labor is located in a discussion of educational reform.

Today even college education, which used to aim to produce versatile professionals, is specialized.
This has been the case for a long time; it has been a major social trend since the end of World War
II. The expansion of the American university system, and more precisely, the growth of graduate
certification, is a major factor here.

Consider a B.A. student who shows promise in historical studies. The student can choose not to
specialize at the B.A. level but will probably opt to write a B.A. thesis on a pretty focused subject,
simply because a thesis is expected of those who apply to graduate school.

When the student moves on to the M.A. level, the student will now be required to declare a
specialty, such as modern Britain. Finally, for the Ph.D. the student must produce a very long
dissertation on a specific topic within the specialty: charity groups in early Victorian England.
At this stage, generalizing and synthesizing count for little. Showing complete mastery of the
particular topic is everything.

Ironically, as the student advances through the degree system, he or she learns more and more
about less and less.

The same is often true in the technical fields. Many students now specialize in computer science
and acquire no basic knowledge of engineering or other fields. That might be okay if the field of
computer science did not in turn break down into specialties, such as cyber security, information
retrieval, and so forth.

What are the costs of this specialization? One cost is that the areas of learning that we call
“disciplines” are now exciting only to those inside of them; often, they even fail to inspire insiders
for their whole career. The massive expansion of universities in recent decades has made it possible
to produce hundreds of experts on Victorian England. They can now hold their own conferences
and sustain their own journals. But who benefits and who cares? Even the specialists are suffering
from doubts about who their audience is and what their role in society as a whole is. A tone of self-
abnegation and cynicism is palpable among many academics today.

Another cost is that students rarely encounter university teachers who think across disciplines or
pose vital problems that cut through multiple fields. As a result, the students are often bored and
stifled. They feel they are being tested on their disciplinary knowledge and not on their capacity to
assemble the building blocks of knowledge in a creative way.

The biggest cost is the risk that we will not have individuals capable of rising to the pressing needs
of our time. In “Interdisciplinary Problem-Based Learning: An Alternative to Traditional Majors and
Minors,” Robert J. Sternberg of Tufts University identifies four such needs:

(1) finding a way to manage—or ideally eradicate— epidemics (e.g., AIDS, SARS, perhaps avian
flu); (2) achieving ways to manage or eliminate terrorism and terrorist attacks; (3) finding ways
to combat global warming and related changes in the atmosphere before it is too late to keep
the earth habitable to humans; and (4) developing positive, effective, ethical leaders who have
at heart the best interests of all their stakeholders, rather than primarily their own interests or
those of groups to which they feel they owe allegiance as a result of family, tribal, political party,
economic, or religious ties.

Sternberg adds: “These four major problems, in common with virtually all problems facing
the world, can be solved only through multidisciplinary thinking. They very well could form
the bases for problem-based majors and minors in university settings.” (Published inLiberal
Education, Winter, 2008, vol. 94, no. 1)

Sternberg describes a new initiative at Tufts to encourage students to combine diverse disciplines
into specially crafted majors. However, right here at UMass Amherst, we have had the kind of
program he describes since the 1970s. The Bachelor’s Degree With An Individual Concentration
(BDIC) is a program in which students invent their own cross-interdisciplinary majors.

The student must draw on at least three disciplines and must envision ways of applying the special
major in his or her future career. Examples of such majors are: “Economics and Legal Studies,”
“Marketing, Communication, and Graphic Design,” “Organizational Development,” “International
Peace Studies,” “Computer Applications in Finance and Economics,” “Film and Women’s Studies,”
“Community Health Education,” and “Arts Administration.”

The students are energized by the fact that they construct a unique and interdisciplinary
curriculum. One student wrote in her senior summary: “I can say that I truly enjoyed what I studied
in college. After all, I’m the one who created it.” Instead of being tested on their mastery of a pre-
existing discipline, the students get credit for being inventive. Many BDIC alumni have gone on to
become versatile and thoughtful leaders in fields related to their specially designed majors.

Fortunately, there is a growing trend among colleges and universities to offer programs like BDIC.
The University of Connecticut was one of the first to follow the lead of UMass by establishing
an Individualized Major Program in 1974. More such programs have been founded in recent years in
response to the widespread disenchantment with conventional academic structures.

These programs are not perfect. But they provide a partial alternative to the problem of
specialization in modern society. Today everyone has a responsibility to ask themselves whether
they are reaching as high and wide as they could in their education and careers. Educators in
particular need to challenge themselves. We need more academic degrees that produce a versatile
problem-solving competence, and fewer degrees that merely attest to specialized expertise.
Or maybe we need fewer academic degrees, period. A greater willingness among university
administrators to hire persons who have been successful in real life activities, whether or not they
have doctoral degrees would certainly invigorate the academy. Our future may well depend on
having more people who are less educated involved in the instruction of our youth.

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