Utkarsh Amitabh argues that a deep generalist combines cross-disciplinary thinking with first-principles reasoning to solve problems and reinvent their career. He critiques siloed education and shows how multidisciplinary learning plus community support enables repeated reinvention, drawing on his own path from engineering to venture capital.
Chapters
Hi everyone. My name is Utkar Shamita and I'm the CEO of Network Capital. Network Capital's mission is to democratize access to meaningful careers. We help build categories of one among school students, young professionals, people doing interesting things. One concept that is really important to us is that of a deep generalist. So the way I started thinking about deep generalism was when I wrote for Mint, one of the largest business newspapers in India. And I looked at the literature and I looked at the way this principle applies to my own life. I'm someone who studied mechanical engineering, then got a degree in liberal arts, then got an MBA and then got another Shivning Fellowship, which is at the intersection of innovation and deep tech. So if you look at my own career, it is academically at least, it has touched upon a wide range of disciplines and ideas. And even when you come to my work experience, I have worked in Microsoft for over six and a half years in a wide range of roles. Then at Teach for India, a nonprofit focused on education in, in different capacities, and I now run a tech startup in the education space. And the more I think about it, the more I realize that at the core of it, one skill or one ability that has held me in good stead is the ability to think laterally, to combine different disciplines, different strains of thought, and essentially gives wings to my own curiosity. So who is a deep generalist? A deep generalist is somebody who can of course, think laterally in combined disciplines, but essentially his or her curiosity is the person's strength. In my own career, in my own life, I find great meaning from looking at problems as problems to be attacked with first principles. I try and not simply juxtapose one example that I've stumbled upon in some part of my life even into another situation. I learn from it, but the essential ability is to think about it with a beginner's mindset, apply different kinds of ideas and insights onto it, and essentially learn to look at problems and become experts at them without preconceived notion, without feeling compelled to throw a whole bunch of complicated buzzwords onto it, and fundamentally complement first principles thinking with lateral, cross disciplinary, multidisciplinary ways of thought, so that the solution you develop to the challenging problems in work and in life are essentially rich in the terms of diversity they offer and how enriched they make your life. Being a deep generalist is an integral 21st century skill because all of us will have multiple careers in our lives. Today we might be entrepreneurs, tomorrow we might become investors, and perhaps we can be both entrepreneurs. Investors and newsletter writers and also podcasters. So this whole portfolio of careers means that we have to reinvent ourselves multiple times. And as we've discussed before on Network Capital, reinvention is only possible with the help of a community. You can't reinvent yourself without taking the support and inspiration of other people. But the core principle of reinvention is that of a beginner's mindset. A beginner's mindset that is not burdened by the prospect of learning new things and abandoning old ways of learning, but perhaps that beginner's mindset that allows you to die, Dive Deep into problems and explore interconnections One of the challenges that I've experienced in the education system in most parts of the world is that they teach history, biology, language, physics, all as completely different disciplines. But the truth of it is that if you want to make somebody truly a world class thinker, you need to be able to explain how dots connect. The best way to explain physics to a child or to a, you know, a young student is to take the person to a park and do calculations while playing in the field, while looking at the swings by looking at the various things that are observable in nature. And the way to write is to translate what you observe with the power of words. And the way to learn, to communicate and to build strong public speaking skills is to practice deliberately, with the help of a coach, with the help of an expert, and essentially make the learning experience inter and multidisciplinary, interconnected, and something that needs to be observed with what I like to call the virgin eyes. Not jaded eyes that are tired of reinvention and recreation, but with the insight and with the ability to really find meaning and energy in combining different strands of thought to see what happens. This ability of deep generalists to look at problems through such a lens or such a methodology is something that makes them not only great problem solvers at work, but also more interesting people just to hang out with. And as we, you know, are emerging or trying to emerge out of this pandemic, one of the things that we can all try and do is to become deep generalists. If you Google that for phrase deep generalist, I'm happy to share that my article in Mint comes up first. You should definitely check it out. And if this concept appeals to you, feel free to subscribe. Subscribe to NetworkCapital TV. We have a fellowship focused on deep generalists, and deep generalism is a core component of the CEO fellowship that we run. And also the I don't know what I want to do with my life Fellowship to flagship programs of network capital. Have a wonderful day and take good care of yourself and become a deep generalist. It'll make your life fun.
