Over the last few decades, we have witnessed the triumph of specialization. You start as a copyright lawyer, spend twenty years honing your craft, and eventually become someone in the field. It is not that different in medicine, where you might dedicate your entire professional life to cardiology, gaining absolute mastery over a single organ while relying on others to understand the rest of the body. Specialization creates excellence, but also dependency.
As this trend deepened, a new phase emerged: the age of collaboration between specialists. The market began to reward the rare alchemy of those who could blend tax, copyright, and restructuring knowledge in a single, orchestrated effort. The Valais of expertise. Like a multidisciplinary team in a hospital, where oncologists, radiologists, and surgeons must come together not only to treat a disease, but to heal a person. The challenge is no longer knowledge in isolation, but integration in context.
But something is shifting. AI is changing everything.
Suddenly, the world no longer asks us to specialize further. It asks us to adapt. To stretch. To be flexible, and, occasionally, to embarrass ourselves. Because no one really knows where we are heading. Will AGI rise? Will 300 million jobs be lost, as Goldman Sachs suggests? Will we all become baristas? (assuming the job won’t be automated as well..)
We do not know. And honestly, be skeptical of those who claim they do.
What I’m beginning to realise is that, sometimes, not knowing can be liberating. There is real value in fresh perspectives, in letting go of the pressure to master everything. In returning to a more holistic gaze. One that does not reduce complexity to silos but learns to read across layers and systems.
This is not a new idea. It is a rediscovery. Think of Leonardo da Vinci: anatomist and engineer, artist and scientist, painter and poet. Or Hildegard of Bingen, philosopher, herbalist, composer, and visionary. Their work still resonates with those seeking a non-fragmented view of reality. Medieval times, and in particular Renaissance, did not celebrate specialists. They celebrated humans capable of thinking across disciplines, connecting ideas, and moving between logic and imagination. That mindset was not a luxury: it was a necessity for innovation.
Maybe the real competitive edge today is not knowing everything, but knowing how to connect. How to jump across domains, sense patterns, ask better questions, and translate insights from one field into another. A generalist is not the opposite of the specialist. It is a different kind of asset, capable of holding complexity and ambiguity without panic. It is someone that weaves what others build, connects what others isolate, offers bridges where most see walls.
Let me be clear. This is not about being shallow. It is about cultivating depth in more than one direction. It is about learning to learn, unlearning fast, and having the courage to reinvent ourselves mid-career, mid-project, or even mid-conversation.
In a world of shifting sands, the ability to navigate across roles, identities, and frameworks might become the most precious skill of all. Because breadth is not the enemy of depth. It is its mirror, its balance, and its necessary companion.
So perhaps the question is no longer “will the generalist rise?” but “can we afford not to?”
