Want Career Growth? Be both a Hedgehog and a Fox

Are you a hedgehog or a fox?

It is perhaps not well-known that most Nobel prize winners have interests in areas far removed from their field of study.

Erwin Schrödinger was a talented painter and woodcarver who found inspiration for his scientific work in art. Santiago Ramón y Cajal applied his artistic eye to drawing the intricate structures of the brain, creating beautiful and scientifically accurate illustrations. Einstein was a music enthusiast, finding solace often by playing violin.

Francis Crick, the discoverer of DNA, used his physics education to help solve a problem in biology that biologists considered practically insoluble. Picasso used African sculpture to refine Western painting and create his unique art.

It is widely accepted that the origin of new ideas and innovation is cross-fertilization of knowledge from different fields in the brain. The far removed these areas are, the more creative the ideas can become.

Ian Leslie in Curious likens this to the analogy of a fox and hedgehog. The fox can escape from his attackers in a variety of cunning ways, while the hedgehog relies on a tried-and-tested strategy, using its spikes as defence. As Leslie quotes, in the words of Greek poet Archilochus, “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”

According to Leslie, Plato was a hedgehog, Montaigne a fox. Tolstoy wrote like a fox. Ronald Reagan was a hedgehog, Bill Clinton a fox. Steve Wozniak was a hedgehog, Steve Jobs a fox, which may explain why they worked so well together.

So, should you be a specialist (like a hedgehog) or a generalist (like a fox)?

The future that we are building today demands people who are a hybrid of these two animals. As Leslie and other researchers suggest, in a knowledge-era, it is crucial to know one or two areas in greater depth than others (specialization), but in order to be creative in this area, you need to supplant it with knowledge from a variety of eclectic domains.

McKinsey recommends a T-shaped skill profile for every employee. On the vertical part of the T are skills that define the employee's depth of expertise. On the horizontal part of the T are essential skills—personal, functional, and industry-specific skills.

Build up your skills in a broad range of areas while pursuing in-depth in one or two areas. Studies of creativity show that people with in-depth knowledge in a few areas, but a broad range of interests in other areas, including arts, turn out to be the biggest achievers. Similar to Nobel prize winners, in organizations, high-performing individuals have a “T-shaped” skill profile, with deep knowledge in a few areas, but interests in a broad range of other domains. They are able to apply the learnings from one domain to another within their organizations. You need to be both the hedgehog and the fox.