Vincent’s Reviews > Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World > Status Update

Well, I have just finished reading the conclusion, and according to my e-reader I'm at 69% through the book. Peculiar. Acknowledgments next.

Finished Chapter 11, about the danger of overreliance on familiar tools, whether they be literal tools such as firefighters' equipment, or more abstract tools like NASA's culture of rigid hierarchical decision-making and insistence on quantitative data.

Finally picked up again. (Re-)read Chapter 9, "Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology", about inventors and innovators, and people with breadth or depth or both and the need for different types in different circumstances. Interesting examples, mainly Yokoi Gunpei of Nintendo fame, but also briefly mentioned names that I was familiar with: Miyazaki Hayao, Neil Gaiman, Jordan Peele.

Read chapter 8, on the outsider advantage, the idea that sometimes a person without too much specialized knowledge can come up with good insights because they are not bogged down by conventional knowledge that may sometimes be wrong or inapplicable to a particular problem. Lots of interesting examples.

Finally picked this book up again and finished (actually re-read, as it had been such a long time) the seventh chapter, on possible selves and doing different things before settling down in a role (if you even ever do). Lots of interesting examples in there.

Read Chapter 4. This business of desirable difficulties (testing, making connections, spacing, interleaving) is very interesting. It's not entirely new to me, but new enough. I should try to remember it.