Generalists' expert performance peaks later than specialists'

Taking as basis the research done by K. Anders Ericsson in the research area of acquisition of expert performance, we can infer that the time it takes an expert to peak is less than a generalist.

Specialists are people who become experts in one particular field. As soon as they identify and focus on the area they want to master, it is just a matter of time and dedication to achieve mastery of that particular field. The boundaries of most disciplines are clearly outlined so continuous and 'deliberate practice' pretty much guarantees high performance

On the other hand we have the generalists. They are people who are "competent in several different fields or activities". This learning most likely will be a mix of formal education, autodidactic behavior, on-the-job training, graduate and post-graduate studies, mentoring, etc. Since their learning time is divided between different disciplines it seems obvious to state that it will take them longer to achieve expert performance in more than one of these disciplines. Potential variables that will affect the time to achieve its peak would be how fast someone can learn, how much knowledge overlap there is between the disciplines, and how much average time is dedicated to learning.

What are the implications for those who are managing innovation teams? The approach to identify talent has to adapt to the type of person you are looking for. The way you test the skills and performance of a specialist will probably have nothing to do compared to the way you would evaluate a generalist.

Specialist: depth of knowledge, progression, and expert performance.
For a specialist, you already know beforehand that she has a core area of expertise so your focus will be on finding out what is her depth of knowledge, what has been her progression curve within the domain, and what evidence can be provided that exemplifies expert performance. Depth of knowledge,

Generalist: breadth of knowledge, unique skill, unique performance.
For the generalist you already know beforehand that she is trying to become an expert in many different areas so your focus will be on finding out what is the breadth of knowledge across areas, how are these areas combined in a unique way, and what is the resulting performance of these unique combination of skills.

Specialists' talent profile is very consistent predictable because you know what core skill you are looking for and in order to find a genius you just have to probe for the depth of expertise and evidence of expert performance. Generalists' talent profile is less predictable because a varying combination of skills can yield a professional that does not fit the known existing patterns and can make it more difficult to identify a genius.

Lesson learned: if you want to be able to spot that one-in-a-million generalist genius you have to be willing to throw away all the talent patterns you know and work hard to be able to identify the value of new talent models brought by people with polyhedric professional backgrounds.