Jay-Z is hip-hop's first billionaire. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
Shawn Carter, better known as Jay-Z, recently became hip-hop's first billionaire. While the 49 year old rose to fame for his music career, he created his fortune by expanding upon this singular specialization — and by diversifying his business interests across a range of industries.
His current holdings, according to Forbes, include: Armand de Brignac champagne ($310 million); cash and investments, including a stake in Uber ($220 million); D’Ussé cognac ($100 million); Tidal music streaming ($100 million); Roc Nation clothing ($75 million); his music catalog ($75 million); an art collection ($70 million); and real estate ($50 million).
In decades past, some would have called Jay-Z a “jack of all trades, master of none” — but the reality is Carter’s success likely stemmed from this very ability: to combine a specialty in entertainment with a strong platform of general business and leadership skills. Jay-Z is what IDEO CEO Tim Brown would call a “T-shaped person”; the “vertical stroke of the ‘T’ is a depth of skill” that aids the creative process, Brown explained, and the horizontal stroke “is the disposition for collaboration across disciplines.”
Although conventional wisdom has maintained that depth and breadth are mutually exclusive, Brown believes T-shaped people break the mold. Carter’s story underscores this idea, demonstrating how one can develop deep and varied knowledge, and along with it, great success. Here are three reasons leaders should consider mirroring Jay-Z — and balancing specialization and generalization to become more T-shaped.
It Widens Career Opportunities
While many career experts espouse concentration on a single specialty as a means of opening doors, some research has shown the opposite to be true. In a study discussed in the Harvard Business Review (HBR), professors Jennifer Merluzzi and Damon Phillips analyzed the records of hundreds of MBA graduates pursuing careers in investment banking.
They discovered that those who had “specialized in investment banking,” through previous jobs and internships, were less likely to “receive multiple job offers than students who had broader backgrounds and experiences.” They also received signing bonuses that were 36% smaller. As the researchers explained: “Specialization becomes commodified, giving you less bargaining power, because you’re easily substitutable.”
That trend has the potential to continue throughout the lifespan of a career, too. In an analysis of 64,000 executives on its platform, LinkedIn discovered that “[w]orking across job functions, like marketing or finance, provides the well-rounded understanding of business operations that are needed to become an executive. Each additional job function provides a boost that’s, on average, equal to three years of work experience.”
Though this research supports a more generalist view of career paths, it does not preclude the benefits of specializing. Career coach Caroline Ceniza-Levine, for one, advises being a generalist in approach and skills, and a specialist in topic and desire. “At senior levels, the jobs are complex enough that you need both a depth of expertise and a range of skills,” she wrote in Forbes. “So you don’t need to choose between branding as a Specialist or a Generalist. You can succeed with an emphasis on either, and in fact need to show elements of both.”
It Enhances Innovation
Since research has suggested that team diversity can lead to greater innovation, it is logical to assume diverse experiences could prove beneficial on an individual level, as well. For example, one Michigan State study found a link between polymathy (the possession of knowledge across many fields) and creativity across a range of important figures and Nobel Laureates. That is perhaps because a “diversity of experiences allows people to think more expansively about their resources, leading to more divergent ways of approaching problems,” according to Scott Sonenshein in his book Stretch.
History is rife with examples of this interdisciplinary approach. As researchers Florenta Teodoridis, Michael Bikard, and Keyvan Vakili wrote in the HBR: “Many studies have found that the best ideas emerge from combining insights from fields that don’t seem connected… Charles Babbage’s invention of computational machines powered by punch cards, the foundation of modern computers, was inspired by Babbage’s knowledge of the silk-weaving industry, which used cards with holes to create patterns in the silk fabric.”
Charles Darwin also used a range of specialties when developing his theory of evolution. “[T]o solve the mystery, he had to think like a naturalist, a marine biologist, and a geologist all at once,” wrote Steven Johnson in Where Good Ideas Come From, traversing “different disciplines and scales.” Though essential to innovation throughout the ages, one could argue that this ability to cross functions and specialties — in the footsteps of Babbage, Darwin, and Jay-Z — is even more applicable in today’s dynamic business-scape.
It Improves Leadership Quality
Though most would agree that leaders need generalist qualities, such as emotional intelligence and the ability to think critically, those who also have specialized knowledge, such as Jay-Z, will rise to the top. “[L]eaders must be generalists, but I do not think they can only be that,” Douglas Greenberg, former head of the Shoah Foundation, told Gary Marx in Future-Focused Leadership. “They must also have some area of special knowledge and expertise that confers legitimacy… You should know something, anything, deeply to be a good leader, and you need to be smart enough to learn almost anything else.”
On his blog, business strategist Andrew Sobel cites the example of David Ogilvy, who previously worked as a chef, stove salesman, farmer, and intelligence agent before becoming an advertising titan. Ogilvy, therefore, had broad skills and knowledge, but did not stop there. He focused on becoming a specialist in advertising, as well as in whichever industries he had clients.
When Ogilvy won the Rolls-Royce account, for example, he spent weeks gaining specialized knowledge by “interviewing Rolls-Royce engineers and managers” and poring “over every word that had ever been written about the company.” In the end, he created a massively successful campaign based on a detail he found in an obscure technical journal (which a strict generalist never would have seen).
Synthesizing generalization with specialization will become ever more important to leaders in the years to come — both on an organizational level, and on an individual level to “future-proof” careers. As Empact co-founder Michael Simmons explained: “In an environment of accelerating change, we’re going to have to become polymaths to survive.” Leaders must become the architects of their own careers, developing skills both broadly and deeply — a strategy to which Jay-Z has long adhered. "I'm hungry for knowledge," he told Men’s Health. "The whole thing is to learn every day, to get brighter and brighter.” Or, as he once famously rapped: “I'm not a businessman/I'm a business, man.”
