He pursued his ambition with a single-minded devotion to his art. He was in a driving range, while the expected motor skill for his age was to be able to run and kick a ball. Tiger Woods started specializing in golf very early in his life. Nobel laureates are 22 times more likely than the rest of us to have a part time occupation as painters, performers or authors.

Steve Jobs credited his calligraphy lessons for the design of font design in Mac. Story after story reinforces his point.Įpstein summons an array of stories to convince us that narrow and early specialization alone can't prepare us for the complexity of real world. The society in general and the education system today appears to be better at creating frogs than birds.Įpstein illustrates this point with a large cast of characters. While you can change careers, sometimes that involves resisting family and societal pressure for success. We see 17-year olds are asked to make educational decisions that commit them to a career path. We need to create an environment where both frogs and birds can thrive. They delight in seeing far and unifying the local insights into bigger thinking. Birds can fly high, survey the landscape far. The frogs know their environment very well, and delight in the details of their neighborhood. Epstein credits another analogy to Freeman Dyson – frogs and birds. The terminology of fox vs hedgehog is now popular - the hedgehog knows only one thing, but the fox knows many things. Actually, make that anyone interested in learning what sort of expertise can create success. A highly recommended read for people in management and human resources. Everyone is digging deeper into one's own trench, too busy to stand up and look over in the next trench, although the solution to the problem at hand may lie there.Įpstein’s book is well written and timely. Increasing specialization has created a system of parallel trenches in the world of innovation.

Generalists book