Gregor Cuzak

on marketing, business and philosophy

Horizontal knowledge

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You need to be a “T” shaped knowledge professional is what I hear quite often. It means that your knowledge is very broad and shallow in most domains, but that you go very deep in at least one.

I would argue that that is not necessary.

I am seeing a lot of people for whom I can’t really say that they have a deep T, they rather resemble this ͞ . But what is surprising is that their ͞ is really very often something like this ͞͞͞ ͞͞ ͞ ͞ ͞ ͞͞ .

I am one of those. My problem is that I don’t know a single domain in which I would see myself as deep. Yes, I’m a know-all-know-nothing, a bluff, a spinster and a crack.

Still, it’s not just me. Very often people credited with a deep T in a domain, get this because of positioning. Other people see them that way, so others assume that what they see is a T, but it’s not.

Also, we see people who never get a degree of any sorts, yet they possess the broadest knowledge. Also, is it possible that T type of knowledge should only be acceptable in natural sciences, but not in humanistic ones. Because there still is jury open on the issue whether any of the findings of social scientists is really science, but rather a juxtaposition of anecdotes, circumstance and professional grandstanding.

May you not be insulted, social scientists, but I have the same type of criticism at hand for the natural ones. They forget too often that none of their theories were ever proven for good, they just remain waiting to be disproven. And once our paradigm changes, all dominos fall.

And so they will. In the flip that is coming, most Ts will turn to ˧s or similar. I’m even afraid that we’re going to see a lot more 0s.

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