This week, we're diving into the messy, counterintuitive world of how we learn, adapt, and innovate. The conventional wisdom often pushes a simple narrative: specialize early, work hard, and you'll succeed. But a trio of recent papers paints a much more complicated and fascinating picture, suggesting that the path to true excellence is a delicate dance between breadth, depth, and the environment we find ourselves in.

Research Roundup

Endogenous Exploration > Exogenous Perfection

Do you dream of your child being the next Messi or Einstein? Then forget any Tiggerish Battle Hymns or Whiplash-inducing obsession, and raise a generalist.

There is a striking difference between world-class and national-class athletes. While national-class athletes (the merely very good) tended to specialize early and rack up practice hours in their main sport, the truly elite performers—the world champions—were more likely to have had a multidisciplinary childhood.

Shockingly, compared to their peers, world-class athletes start “their main sport later”, accumulate “less main-sport practice” in their youth, and progress “more slowly” at first, all on top of playing a greater diversity of sports.

Don’t care about sports? The same pattern holds for Nobel laureates. They have “more multidisciplinary study/working experience and slower early progress” compared with national award-winning scientists.

Early breadth builds a more robust foundation for long-term, world-class success than hyper-specialization. Early specialization might make you good faster, but a generalist background makes you better in the end.

The Pivot Penalty

As a serial entrepreneur I’ve been "raised" on the advice to pivot: if your current business plan isn’t working, discover a new one quickly. It turns out that same advice may not hold for careers.

Across “millions of papers and patents”, when researchers and inventors move into new areas of work, the impact of their new research steeply declines. And this "pivot penalty" is worse the further they move from their previous expertise.

While an early, broad foundation may be crucial for success, trying to pivot later in your career seems to be an increasingly costly strategy—one that has been growing over the last 50 years.

“The pivot penalty generalizes across fields, career stage, productivity, collaboration and funding contexts, highlighting both the breadth and depth of the adaptive challenge.”

Why? These pivots often show a "weak engagement with established mixtures of prior knowledge" suggesting that jumping into a new field without a deep understanding is a recipe for low-impact work.

To make matters worse, hidden among the “shallow engagement” is true innovation. A small but crucial number of pivots lead to new, disruptive ideas that existing fields are slow to accept.

Adaptation, it seems, is a deeply challenging—and often penalized—endeavor.

Our Uncertain Future…by design

When is it better to be a flexible generalist, and when is it better to be an efficient specialist? The answer is uncertain…literally.

The optimal cultural transmission of knowledge depends on sociocultural stability.

• In stable, predictable worlds, future generations learn procedures: explicit, efficient, step-by-step "how" to do things.
• In variable, changing worlds, they switch to learning goals and problem-solving: the flexible, adaptable "why."

The question for all of us is: which world are we living in? But my question is, if AI has mastered the certain, why are we still raising generations of proceduralists? Every country on the planet should build a workforce for “why”.

Media Mentions

The journey from a "mad science" hypothesis to a real-world tool that can change lives is one of the most thrilling parts of my work. I'm incredibly proud that Smithsonian Magazine has featured the story of Dionysus Health and our first-in-the-world blood test to predict a new mother's risk for postpartum depression.

This isn't just about a new diagnostic. It's a testament to how we can use AI and our understanding of epigenetics—the molecular memory of our experiences—to fundamentally shift healthcare from reactive to proactive. By giving women and their doctors the ability to anticipate risk, we empower them to build support systems and create a plan before a crisis hits, transforming the narrative around maternal mental health.

We have worked so hard for so many years to make this a reality. You can take a huge step forward here: https://myluma.health/

SciFi, Fantasy, & Me

Ever have a reading experience that felt like literary double exposure? I just finished Adrian Tchaikovsky's grimly charming House of Open Wounds while coincidentally re-listening to Terry Pratchett's Small Gods (way back when, my 1st Discworld novel).

The experience revealed a strange kinship: the tiny, foul old “God” of healing from Tchaikovsky's world and Pratchett's grumpy, turtle-form god Om feel like they were forged in the same philosophical fire. Both are stripped of divine dignity, forced to reckon with their existence, and defined by the sheer absurdity of belief.

I can absolutely hear Om the Turtle shouting, "I don't like the radish!"

If you love your fantasy and sci-fi gods small, curmudgeonly, and prone to existential crises, try this unexpected pairing!

Stage & Screen

• November 4-8, Mountain View: More fun with the Singularity University Executive Program
• November 12, NYC: AI for Good in New York with my friends at the Kennedy Human Rights.
• November 18, NYC: Then I'm hanging around for a book reading because my book is out for pre-orders!!! (Venue TBD)
• November 18, NYC: Yes, New York again–this time for the Techonomy Conference.
• December 3, Nassau: All our fingers are crossed for Bermuda to come through the hurricane. If all is well, its time for AI and Insurance: Is AI the World's Greatest Actuarial Table?
• December 8, San Francisco: Fortune Brainstorm AI SF talking about build a foundation model for human development
• Winter & Spring 2026: new events already brewing in Amsterdam, London, NYC, LA, and much more!

Vivienne L'Ecuyer Ming