They saw that papers with new knowledge combinations were more likely to be published in less prestigious journals, and also much more likely to be ignored upon publication. The group tracked the impact of research papers over time. Just one in ten papers made a new combination, and only one in twenty made multiple new combinations. “A separate, international team analyzed more than a half million research articles, and classified a paper as “novel” if it cited two other journals that had never before appeared together. Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World The more constrained and repetitive a challenge, the more likely it will be automated, while great rewards will accrue to those who can take conceptual knowledge from one problem or domain and apply it in an entirely new one.” Faced with any problem they had not directly experienced before, the remote villagers were completely lost. And that is what a rapidly changing, wicked world demands-conceptual reasoning skills that can connect new ideas and work across contexts. They were perfectly capable of learning from experience, but failed at learning without experience.

Their very thinking was highly specialized in a manner that the modern world has been telling us is increasingly obsolete. They were extremely well prepared for what they had experienced before, and extremely poorly equipped for everything else.

“Like chess masters and firefighters, premodern villagers relied on things being the same tomorrow as they were yesterday.

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