Generalists Are Having
Their Revenge

Why range is the superpower nobody hired for

different job titles I've held in 15 years. Every recruiter called it a red flag. It was the point.

The specialist trap

For two decades the industry told us to specialise. Pick a lane. Go deep. Become the world's foremost expert in one thing. It was good advice for a world where skills were scarce and tools were hard. That world is gone. Depth without breadth is now a vulnerability, not a strength.

My career looks like a mess on paper

Strategy. Content. Social. Creative technology. Consulting. Product. Building. Eight different titles in fifteen years. Every recruiter flagged it as indecision. But each role added a layer of understanding that compounds now. The mess was the plan.

The accidental generalist bootcamp

I founded Burst Communications and accidentally enrolled in the most intense generalist programme imaginable. Sales on Monday, hiring on Tuesday, accounting on Wednesday, creative direction on Thursday, fixing the printer on Friday. Nobody tells you that founding a company is really just learning twelve jobs at once, badly, until you're passable at all of them. That compressed cross-training became the foundation of everything I've built since.

Range is pattern recognition

The most interesting ideas happen at intersections. Between industries, between disciplines, between cultures. You can only see those intersections if you've been to more than one place. A strategist who has worked in advertising, music, retail, and technology sees connections that a pure advertising specialist never will.

The clients that range unlocked

Nike needed someone who understood sport AND culture AND community AND digital product. Gucci needed someone who got luxury AND gaming AND Gen Z AND web3. Google needed technology AND storytelling AND scale AND local nuance. Every brief that mattered sat at an intersection. The specialists couldn't reach it. The generalist was already there.

in Web3 revenue I generated at MediaMonks. Not because I was a blockchain specialist. Because I understood culture, community, and storytelling. Range found the opportunity. Depth alone would have missed it.

products across culture, food, sport, music, fashion, language, and AI. The range IS the portfolio.

The one-person studio

AI collapsed the distance between idea and execution. A single person with taste, range, and the right tools can now do what used to take a team of twelve. Design, build, write, deploy, market. Not because they're superhuman. Because the tools finally caught up with the ambition of the generalist.

The dots connect backwards

Steve Jobs was right. You can't connect the dots looking forward. My advertising background gave me storytelling. Music gave me cultural timing. Retail gave me consumer empathy. Tech gave me product thinking. None of it was planned. All of it compounds into something nobody else has because nobody else took the same path.

Side projects are the MBA nobody sells

Every side project teaches you something a course never could. You learn to ship under constraints. You learn to make decisions without a brief. You learn what you actually care about versus what you think you should care about. A portfolio of shipped experiments is worth more than any qualification.

The interview question nobody asks

The most revealing question in any interview isn't about your last role. It's: what are you into right now? Not professionally. Just... into. The person who lights up talking about Japanese ceramics, underground music, urban planning, and fermentation is the person who will see connections nobody else sees. Range reveals itself in enthusiasm. Hire the person with the widest interests.

The imposter advantage

Being a generalist means you're rarely the most expert person in the room on any single topic. That used to terrify me. Now I see it as the position. The strategist doesn't need to be the best coder, the best designer, or the best data analyst. They need to be fluent enough to connect all three. The imposter feeling is actually the signal that you're operating at the right altitude. High enough to see the whole picture. Close enough to ask the right questions.

I didn't pick a lane. I picked all of them. That used to be a liability. Now it's the whole point.

The 9pm to midnight window

I build everything between 9pm and midnight. After the day job, after bedtime stories, after the house goes quiet. Three hours. That constraint is the point. It forces clarity. It demands you know exactly what you're making and why. There's no time for unnecessary features when you have to ship before you sleep.

Curiosity compounds

Every rabbit hole, every obsession, every random thing you read at 1am adds to a library you didn't know you were building. Ten years of curiosity creates an instinct that can't be taught. You don't know why a certain brand feels wrong or why a certain product feels right. You just do. That's the compound interest of paying attention.

The non-coder advantage

I can't write a line of code. That's a feature, not a bug. It means I approach building like a user, not an engineer. I think in experiences, not in functions. AI handles the syntax. I handle the taste, the strategy, and the decision of what's worth making. The best products aren't built by the best coders. They're built by the best thinkers who can now code.

Breadth is the new depth

The strategist who understands product, design, engineering, content, and culture at a working level is more valuable than the one who is world-class at media planning but can't have a conversation about typography. AI handles the depth now. Humans provide the breadth, the judgement, the connection between things.

Range makes better leaders

Every leadership role I've had worked because I'd done a version of everyone's job. I could talk to engineers about trade-offs because I'd built things. I could talk to designers about references because I'd studied them. I could talk to content teams about narrative because I'd written it. Range doesn't just make you a better individual contributor. It makes you the kind of leader people want to work with because you understand what they actually do.

AI needs a generalist at the wheel

AI is the ultimate specialist. It can go infinitely deep on any single topic. What it can't do is decide which topics matter, how they connect, or when the output is good enough. That's a generalist's job. The person directing AI needs range because AI has none. It has depth without breadth. You provide the breadth. It provides the depth. That's the partnership.

The kid test

My two-year-old will grow up in a world where AI can do anything. The education system will still tell him to specialise. But the people who thrive will be the ones who are curious about everything, who can connect unexpected things, who have taste and range and the itch to build. The generalist era isn't coming. It's here.

new things I'm building in 2026. Not a resolution. A practice. The more you make, the more connections you see.

Range is the new moat

In a world where AI can replicate any single skill, the combination of skills is what can't be copied. Strategy plus building plus taste plus cultural instinct plus editorial eye. That specific stack is unreplicable because it was assembled by accident over fifteen years. Your unique range is your moat.

The proof is external

Named a BIMA 100 Tech Pioneer. Published a book through BCS on Web3 and emerging technology. Not because I was the deepest technical expert. Because I could connect technology to culture to business to storytelling in a way specialists couldn't. External recognition validates what range feels like from the inside: messy, risky, unconventional. From the outside it looks like vision.

years of saying yes to things that didn't fit a neat career narrative. Every one of them added a layer. Strategy. Content. Social. Creative tech. Web3. Product. Building. The range wasn't planned. It was followed. And now it's unreplicable.

Nobody cares what you say you can do. They care what you've shipped. A live URL beats a case study. A working product beats a strategy document. The generalist's advantage is that their portfolio looks like a studio's output, not a single person's.

The real question isn't generalist vs specialist. It's knowing which problems reward which approach.

Range is the thesis. Culture infrastructure is the application. If generalists see patterns across domains, then a culture intelligence role is what happens when you give that generalist a system.

The future doesn't belong to the person who knows the most about one thing. It belongs to the person who can connect everything.

They told me to pick a lane. I built a motorway instead.

Thank you.

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