Lessons from SXSW: Expertise isn’t your superpower, it’s your fatal flaw

As we prepare to board the flight back from SxSW in Austin, one of the thoughts that has stuck with us is FOMA. We’re all very aware of FOMO, but when you spend five days in this bustling hub of ideas, technology, culture, the overwhelming feeling is the fear of missing anything. Every door you don’t walk through, every conversation you don’t have, feels like you’ve missed a mind-expanding opportunity.

So what did we learn from the doorways we did walk through? We heard the world’s leading experts on everything from quantum computing, stem cells, business transformation, venture capital… even the scent-based communication of bees. And one of the biggest themes was the death of expertise. Whatever field people are working in, the pace of change is accelerating exponentially. As futurist Ian Beacraft explained, while previous generations would spend their early years learning and mastering a field, and their working life applying that expertise, that model is broken. The skills we’re acquiring now have a shelf life of a handful of years. The rising tide of automation means that what you could do yesterday, AI will be able to do better tomorrow. So it’s not what you know, it’s how quickly you can unlearn what you knew and replace it with the next thing.

But even more intriguingly, knowing too much is actually a problem. We heard about ‘cognitive entrenchment’, where your mastery of a topic limits your ability to be creative and innovate; you become guardian of the orthodoxy. And even worse, this routine expertise can make you worse at your job. Studies have shown, for example, that senior financial auditors are worse at spotting financial fraud than accountancy undergraduates, because their expertise stops them questioning.

Of course, ignorance isn’t the answer either. In fact, we need expertise now more than ever. It’s just that we should be aiming to gather expertise in a range of wildly diverse topics. As Deloitte’s Mike Betchel urged us, don’t settle for curiosity, be intellectually promiscuous. Spend 5 hours a week learning something utterly different, and you’ll be able to make the connections that other minds, artificial or not, can’t.

It’s in that spirit we’re bringing our learnings back to our colleagues and clients in London. There were plenty of talks about brands, strategy, and communication. Those aren’t the doors we walk through. Instead we’ll be sharing insights into how to stop researchers being scared of quantum computers, how robots are changing, the impact of reproductive rights on global business, theme park design and cows burping. If you fancy spending an hour being intellectually promiscuous, you can join in too. Just don’t ask us about the various bee pheromone’s we smelled were different. Despite what we told the Apiologist we met, we couldn’t tell the difference.

For all the details to join our session, message jgibb@stlukes.co.uk

Dan Hulse is the chief strategy officer & partner at St Luke's London