Taking this back to the startup world, I find that the enjoyable wicked problem of cross-disciplinary engineering in a startup environment is that you get to bu

Taking this back to the startup world, I find that the enjoyable wicked problem of cross-disciplinary engineering in a startup environment is that you get to build things in areas in which you have only generalist knowledge. The task of the founding team is to optimize not only the process of discovery within those specific domains but also to ensure the development and management the team, providing a correct degree of emphasis on tangible outputs with respect to commercialization and available resources, with an eye on the future developments and business and research landscape. It's damn hard, it's fun, it's addictive, it's unlike anything else. More briefly, the venture notion might be re-construed as the belief that generalists who reliably and tirelessly execute win large returns because they have their eye on the big picture and can deliver aggregate value beyond component achievements. The patent world has long recognized this notion as something like a 'novel arrangement' of pre-existing components. Another idea is that specialists, by virtue of the well defined discipline in which they hold expertise, are easily located and hired/consulted. Arguably rarer competent generalists therefore become the de-facto 'glue' to link the requisite fruit of those specialist domains. Da Vinci himself was apparently against overt formalization of learning and rigid professional hierarchies: They will say that because of my lack of book learning, I cannot properly express what I desire to treat of. Do they not know that my subjects require for their exposition experience rather than the words of others? And since experience has been the mistress, and to her in all points make my appeal. - Leonardo Da Vinci ... via https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup