Going Critical
I am struck in particular by the 'expert --> idea' simulation. It suggests that an effective strategy for beating the competition to the punch in making a breakthrough discovery is to concentrate a diverse collection of expertise (it also explains why it pays to be very social in your career as a researcher).<p>As mentioned in the article, putting specialists together in the same room is one way to accomplish this, but I can imagine the same happening in the mind of a single polymath, who, though perhaps being mediocre in several subjects, connects enough dots to beat the competition to combining them in a novel way. It might also make sense to recruit a few such polymaths/generalists to be put in your room of distinct experts, since they might serve well as a sort of 'interconnect bus' between them.