Experts often recommend that people specialize in one field of work or research to maximize their chances of success. Yet our recently published research indicates that successful innovators take a broader path.
We looked at the careers of Nobel Prize winners, who are arguably among the most innovative people in the world. We found that they are unusually likely to be what we call “creative polymaths.” That is, they purposely integrate formal and informal expertise from widely varied disciplines to yield new and useful ideas and practices.
