Accidental Vagrant

There are ongoing discussions about the value of generalists versus specialists . The discussions are long running, only occasionally morphing into discussions championing people who are both competent generalists and able specialists —what businesses calls ‘T’ people. However the discussions quickly self-correct back to the debate between the value of generalization versus specialization. ‘T’ people display competency in both breadth and depth of knowledge and skills—but interest in them primarily remains academic. You don’t actually see many advertisements and hiring campaigns for people with ‘T’ skills but the rhetoric declaiming the value of combining such skills remains popular.  ‘T’ people have been occasional objects of interest in government and the military, but nothing serious enough to actually cause changes to be made to accommodate them. Agencies and military branches remain primarily committed to siloed organizational designs. Structured differentiation...

As Yogi Berra said: “When you come to a fork in the road take it!”.  Design is at at least one fork in the road: how designers think and Design Thinking (the brand). — Design Thinking (the brand) is not a description of how designers think, it is steps creative problem solvers take—as first developed mid last century and now repackaged for the 21 st Century. It is a good approach to problem solving. Harvard Business Review Design Thinking Comes of Age https://hbr.org/2015/09/design-thinking-comes-of-age — Our understanding of how designers think and act is constantly evolving through collaborative experience and shared dialogue. Designing is how our desired futures are made real. It is a good approach when problem solving is not enough. MIT Press The Design Way; Intentional Change in an Unpredictable World https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/design-way