Generalist or Specialist?

Monday, June 7, 2010

I've always thought that I had no patience. I can't do one thing well like a specialist. But that doesn't mean I don't work hard. In fact, I consider myself a much harder worker than most of my specialist peers.Read more...

The thing is though, if you follow the 80/20 rule (aka The Pareto's Principle), I just don't see why I should take anything beyond a certain level of expertise. If I take the energy I spend in making one thing from 80% good to 90% good or even to 99% good, I could make 5 other things from 10% good to 80% good. And anything that's 80% good is enough to beat the average don't you think? Is that enough for me to survive? Well, so far so good...

Maybe I say this because I'm interested in too many things, but I just don't have the patience nor the talent to take any of them to the level of real expertise. Then again, where do you draw the line between a generalist and a specialist? Does having a PhD or MBA make me a specialist? I don't think so. I simply consider myself a well educated generalist. My titles and languages allow me to speak with scientists and businessmen, but not for me to lead any specific scientific or business project. For that, I need more expertise. I think.

But as I get older, I find that more and more I restrict myself to my three main career assets: my science, business know-how, and my languages. At work, I try to reduce focus on anything that is not pre-clinical science and clinical science. It's a good feeling to see that boundaries of what I want to learn and gain as experience. Finally I don't have to feel obliged to learn everything that comes my way.

Introduction

Monday, May 24, 2010

Let me start today to document some of my thoughts on my career over the years. This is mostly for my own thought organization, as a guide for myself going forward, but if it could be useful for anyone out there, then bonus.Read more...

So let's get the introduction out of the way. I was born in Hong Kong, to a Taiwanese and Japanese mother. I grew up in Taiwan, went to an American elementary school, moved to Quebec, Canada to go to high school, then I went through university in biology in Montreal, graduate school in DNA repair in Quebec City, and finally a post-doc in transcription and an MBA in finance in Tokyo. As I finished up my post-doc and MBA, I moved directly from frontline bench work to working in the CEO Office of a large pharmaceutical company doing R&D Management. So there you have the ultra-short version. For more details, please visit my language blog.