I agree with many of the premises here, and I like this as a way of conceptualising skillsets, but I’m not sure I find it all that useful.
The main omission in this essay, to my mind, is any mention of skill interdependence. If you’re one of the first people to discover the fertile gerontology/statistics niche, then you might get your 15 minutes of fame, and your early adopter status might give you a comparative advantage. But as soon as it becomes commonly recognised how fertile the ground is in this niche, there’ll be tons of people right behind you chasing the low-hanging fruit.
Because of this, training programmes in gerontology start making statistics courses more robust and mandatory; research journals start publishing more statistics-heavy papers; labs start doing more statistics-heavy work; it becomes harder to get promoted, or get a foot in the door, without some familiarity with statistics. And so on. Everyone wants to be modern and interdisciplinary. But the inevitable result of this is that statistics eventually becomes a basic, fundamental prerequisite for calling yourself a gerontologist. The skills “gerontology” and “statistics” become strongly correlated. And now, suddenly, your two-dimensional picture has collapsed to a one-dimensional picture.
This may be a gross oversimplification, but I think the point approximately stands. As soon as a niche with high problem density is discovered, the density of skilled problem-solvers in that area quickly rises to meet it. You can only stand out if (a) you’re an early adopter, (b) you have skills that others in your area would find it prohibitively difficult to replicate, or (c) your niche isn’t too fruitful—i.e. nobody is interested in trying to rake in a share of the profit.
This may be a gross oversimplification, but I think the point approximately stands. As soon as a niche with high problem density is discovered, the density of skilled problem-solvers in that area quickly rises to meet it. You can only stand out if (a) you’re an early adopter, (b) you have skills that others in your area would find it prohibitively difficult to replicate, or (c) your niche isn’t too fruitful—i.e. nobody is interested in trying to rake in a share of the profit.
This was a good crystallization of this point, thanks.
I agree with many of the premises here, and I like this as a way of conceptualising skillsets, but I’m not sure I find it all that useful.
The main omission in this essay, to my mind, is any mention of skill interdependence. If you’re one of the first people to discover the fertile gerontology/statistics niche, then you might get your 15 minutes of fame, and your early adopter status might give you a comparative advantage. But as soon as it becomes commonly recognised how fertile the ground is in this niche, there’ll be tons of people right behind you chasing the low-hanging fruit.
Because of this, training programmes in gerontology start making statistics courses more robust and mandatory; research journals start publishing more statistics-heavy papers; labs start doing more statistics-heavy work; it becomes harder to get promoted, or get a foot in the door, without some familiarity with statistics. And so on. Everyone wants to be modern and interdisciplinary. But the inevitable result of this is that statistics eventually becomes a basic, fundamental prerequisite for calling yourself a gerontologist. The skills “gerontology” and “statistics” become strongly correlated. And now, suddenly, your two-dimensional picture has collapsed to a one-dimensional picture.
This may be a gross oversimplification, but I think the point approximately stands. As soon as a niche with high problem density is discovered, the density of skilled problem-solvers in that area quickly rises to meet it. You can only stand out if (a) you’re an early adopter, (b) you have skills that others in your area would find it prohibitively difficult to replicate, or (c) your niche isn’t too fruitful—i.e. nobody is interested in trying to rake in a share of the profit.
This was a good crystallization of this point, thanks.