Design Thought Leader

The specialist vs. generalist debate has raged on, throughout many fields, for ages. I think it’s clear that there isn’t any answer to this debate, and that’s just fine, the debate has been and probably will continue to be an interesting one that doesn’t need, or have, an absolute answer. Having said that, I think what truly matters is a genuine interest and passion for what you’re doing, not so much the depth and breath of your skill set.

I know many successful generalists and more than a few successful specialists. But does it really matter one way or the other? Is it better to be specialized? Do you have to be specialized in order to advance your skills? Do generalists have more fun? I don’t think so. If there is an answer to these questions it’s likely the ever cliched ‘it depends.’

Depends on the person, the position, the organization, budgets, work load, team make up, et cetera.

The specialist vs. generalist argument really boils down to this: What really matters is your passion for your work, the rest is just a heaping pile of ‘it depends.’ …

Skills can be learned. Programming, design, writing, project management; all of these things can be practiced and developed. A true desire to succeed, passion for your work, a solid work ethic; these are harder to come by.

Bottom-line: if you’re willing to work hard, practice, learn and bring passion to the table every day you should do well, either as a specialist or as a generalist.

D. Keith Robinson
Designer

At its core, innovation is applied creativity. And, it is my belief since I have seen it for years is that most employees can be encouraged to be creative, if you want them to be.

How can you encourage small innovations?

Think small. The beauty of small innovations is that they focus on immediate concerns, not on finding game-changing products. Encourage your people to find a solution to a problem, or a better way of doing things.

Try posing questions: How can accounting streamline billing? How can customer service resolve issues on the phone without supervisor intervention? How can product engineers find more time to spend with customers? Using such questions will get people generating ideas. Not every idea will be brilliant, but that’s the point. You want to collect ideas, refine them, and select the best for implementation.

Implement locally. Since most small innovations are limited to a department or a function, put them into action as soon as possible. If the idea does not work as expected, don’t abandon it immediately—see if you can tweak it. Implementation itself can be creative and sometimes it takes several tries to make innovative ideas work as expected, or beyond expectations.

Promote widely. You need to recognize those who think of and support the innovations. Many organizations provide incentives for such efforts, from gift coupons all the way up to substantive bonuses for innovations that positively affect the entire company. The important thing is to recognize the right people, and to do it in a timely fashion.

Encouraging small innovations is only part of the management equation. Execution of the innovations is critical. No amount of applied creativity can make up for slipped deadlines, blown budgets, dissatisfied customers, or unbalanced profit and loss statements. You need to focus on the details to get things done.

John Baldoni
Author and Leadership Consultant

Getting projects built requires strong alliances between the client, engineers, and architect, as well as good collaboration with the city government. Architecture is not a solitary pursuit. I don’t think we’re especially fast or successful at getting things built, at least not by European standards. But we do manage to find clients who share our view of architecture. We have a longing to experiment with space, bring out the site’s potential, and speculate on possibilities for rethinking conventions. It seems risky at first; however, all our projects so far have proved very economically successful.

One strategy we discuss during the design process is the ambiguity of meaning. A project has more presence and impact if there’s some doubt about it, something quite bold yet difficult to describe and hard to grasp. We like to offer more than one potential reading per project, to allow for individual appropriation, but the relationship between nature and technology is always an underlying topic.

Jürgen Mayer H.
Founder of J. Mayer H. Architects

As a designer, one of the things that fascinates me about photography is camera language. In design, we talk a lot about creating visual grammar through choices of color, line, form and typography. These are the building blocks we use to create a grammatical system with which to construct visual communication.

In photography, the same concept is referred to as camera language (although in practice, the term is more frequently used when discussing cinematography and filmmaking). As in design, color, line and form are important elements that help define a visual grammar. But technical and mechanical forces are also at work: lighting and lens choices, film speed, paper choice, aperture settings, shutter speed and camera angles are all mechanical controls you can use to define a signature camera language. …

Through manipulation of equipment, color, lighting and composition, it’s amazing how a photographer can establish a distinct visual language and then, using different mechanicals, add what can best be described as visual linguistic dialects.

Callie Neylan
Senior Interactive Designer at NPR.org

Design to me is the embodiment of elegance, it’s trying to use just enough to do/communicate the most. …

It’s not less is more. It’s not simple as possible. It’s just what’s needed, no more, no less.

Noah Brier
Head of Strategic Planning, The Barbarian Group