Something I didn‘t fully appreciate when I was still dabbling in various areas of scientific research was how invaluable it can be to achieve both depth and breadth in education. Steve Jobs’ oft-cited quote from his 2005 Stanford commencement speech predicted that my revelation would only come after reflection:
You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.
In academia, we're often encouraged to specialize early, focusing on building expertise in one field to the exclusion of others. It was no wonder that I felt uncomfortable about gaining skills in molecular simulation only to swap the computing cluster for pipettes and flasks in grad school. I've just always been so interested in science as a whole that I couldn't bear to pigeonhole myself.
It turns out that mastering one area while still gaining enough experience to be dangerous in others is now being more widely appreciated, although proof has existed for centuries with the success of multidisciplinary scholars like Marie Curie and Hypatia of Alexandria. Talent investor Entrepreneur First looks for founders with an Edge (an unfair advantage gained from academic or corporate experience) who are then rounded out with startup and business skills over the course of the program. The Schmidt Science Fellows program enables PhD graduates to undertake a year-long postdoc in a completely different discipline. I've personally found that an intellectual curiosity and understanding across multiple STEM fields has come in handy as a VC. Why is the concept of a T-shaped person now trending? By being T-shaped, a person can obtain the benefits of being both a specialist and generalist without succumbing to the downsides of being one or the other. This is critical to solving some of the biggest global challenges we face, from climate change to healthcare.
Becoming a T-shaped individual naturally takes more time and effort than becoming an I-shaped or dash-shaped person. What if we could begin the learning process earlier on in our lives? During the keynote fireside chat at The Engine's Tough Tech Summit 2020, Tom Kalil talked about how universities could empower students to major in a discipline (vertical stroke of the "T") and minor in a problem (horizontal stroke of the "T"). With a little tweaking, America's liberal arts education system could be well-suited to develop T-shaped college graduates. I am hopeful that an education that broadens horizons in a focused way will enrich future generations of students with the intellectual curiosity, purpose, and capability to drive impactful societal and global changes.
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