# The intersection of two things is where great ideas lie Created: 2023_03_22 21:18 Tags: [[Business]] ## Ideas in business Nowadays, almost everyone is aiming to be a specialist, it is actually the basis of how a modern civilization works, I don't have to grow wheat and make bread myself, I can do something else I am good at and can trade a bit of my specialty for that bread instead with this fungible thing called money. Given that everyone is becoming more and more specialized, they spend more time [[Generating New Ideas#Mastering|mastering]] their existing body of work rather than [[Generating New Ideas#Remixing|remixing]] them, that is to say that a cell biologist will spend more time thinking about cells than they will about fashion. But the interesting thing is that our world is not a bunch of hyper specialized silos, it's super interconnected, and to be able to see those connections is difficult the farther down you follow one thread. And that is not without reason, myelin growth in skill cells seems like quite the leap into watch bands. And while it is a leap, it is not too dissimilar to the seven degrees of Kevin Bacon, where if given just a few leaps you can find their intersection. Given the story of VitroLabs founding, where an executive in the fashion industry read an article about cloning an animal part and thought he would reach out to the scientist involved to see if they could jointly do the same thing for cow leather. In this intersection is precisely where fashion meets biology, and myelin growth in skin cells suddenly becomes pertinent to watch bands. There is a trope now that 'software is eating the world' but it is not that software singly is doing so, it is the realization by many people that there is an intersection between software with its automation, organization and efficiency that creates niches for companies to sprout from. ## Ideas as personal capital Now this all may be obvious even in the context of ideas and businesses, but it is also true of you and your skill set. On one extreme, you have the hyper specialist who spends their days in their silo, thinking about nothing other than depth into their problems. This depth opens doors in that field, only by digging deeper do we find answers to the questions we have about that field. But there is more to this world than a single field, why learn so much about how a fungus grows only on this one mountain top? We need a purpose to integrate into, now that purpose may be simply to advance the field in any way possible, but I posit that is more of a deterrent to people than what attracts them. It is true that a jack of all trades is the master of none. But imagine all different combinations of connections such a person would be able to see, the industries they could 'disrupt'. Now it is extremely difficult and exceedingly unlikely for a person to be interested much less able to perform work in too many fields. So let's tone it down a bit, I was once told by a person whom I look up to that you've got to reinvent yourself every 10 years. Now there are many interpretations around that but the one that applies now is how this reinvention allows you perspective into a totally different field where you can draw analogies from your existing perspective into to find those great ideas. It is no coincidence that many of the foundational people in science and math were polymaths, because it is precisely through remixing of ideas that you can generate new ones. ## References - People think in terms of analogies, and it is through these analogies that we come to understand new things, and this understanding breaks ground for even more things that 'flow' from that idea. - [[T Shaped Skills]] having breadth allows you to make these connections - [[Range - David Epstein|Range]] having range lets you excel in the execution of these connections you've made