One of my favorite little podcasts is Two Guys on Your Head by Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke. Fun to learn, efficient episodes, and funny fellas. You should go listen to it here.

Their Curiosity episode explored the idea of the expert generalist—that the most innovative people are those who know a lot about a lot of different things. Sure, they were talking about the big guns, folks like Charlie Munger and Albert Einstein and such. But the episode got me thinking because it describes a lot about who we are and what we do at Redhead.

In a nutshell, they describe expert generalists as folks who possess three qualities:

Openness to experience. Enjoying new things, learning something you have never learned before. Without exception, the most creative people I have met are always up for something new. They are crazy learners and almost manic consumers of new experiences. A food I’ve never heard of? A new art medium? Learn to knit/weld/rewire/bake? “Sure, why not.” For the record, Lansing’s Old Town is filled to the brim with these people. It’s not just the Reds.

Need for cognition. In essence, thinking is good and necessary. Thinking is a valuable way to spend time. Wondering about the world and the what-if—the job of philosophers and inventors. Problem-solving requires a lot of thinking. For us, it goes by many labels: brainstorming, exploration, threads, false starts, failures, playing around. For creatives, it’s critical, because every solution is, in essence, unique. We’ve got to think it up. Generally, the more thinking time there is, the more magical the answer.

Finally, being low in conscientiousness. This one is a bit of a buzzkill. It really boils down to not doing what you’re supposed to be doing, because you are too busy exploring an idea that has taken hold of your brain. This is the bane of a deadline-driven environment, for sure. Integral to every creative human, and nearly impossible to channel: I should be working on that magazine deadline … but have some great ideas for that logo project that’s supposed to kick off next week … oh, but what if we take that idea from lunch yesterday and turned it into a series of posters and … squirrel! Shiny objects, rabbit holes, left turns and obsessions.

Great creatives are indeed expert generalists. Always up for something new, nonstop wondering about the world, adorably distractable. The fact that a profession exists where we get to apply these traits to any industry and actually feed our curiosity and make a living while doing so? Milhouse.