In the Victorian era parlor game “The Imitation Game,” two people -- one woman and one man -- try to convince an interrogator that they are the real woman. A similar game is constantly taking place in our modern economy. In this game, specialized expertise is considered the gold standard, and professional generalists find themselves in the position of convincing others that their varied experience is as valuable as that of the narrow specialist. In fact, as our economy moves towards even more automation of specialized tasks, the value of a generalist’s perspective is growing. Further, in a world of growing complexity, the advantage goes to the generalist, who may lose to a specialist’s expertise in a single domain, but wins every time when the game continues to span across many domains. Brandy Foster leveraged her Master’s in Literature and love of Jane Austen into becoming a Senior Lecturer in Computer Science at Wright State University. Her unique trajectory included a stint as a freelance technical editor, which provided an extensive breadth of knowledge across many disciplines, yielding rare perspective from which to identify novel connections and contexts across domains. The pinnacles of her career include leading a multi-organization team pursuing a $100M grant and attracting a corporate gift of $675,000 to found The ONEIL Center at Wright State, a first-of-its-kind experiential learning enterprise that supports the startup and research communities. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at [ Ссылка ]
