Be more polymath
New perspectives and the application of thinking from one field of study to another drive innovation, creativity, and progress. These attributes are at the heart of good marketing. But where are our polymaths? Why is there so little movement of people between agencies of different persuasions? Nick Kavanagh explores these questions.
Marie Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the first person, man, or woman, to win the award twice. But beyond establishing herself as a leading thinker in a field dominated by men years before female suffrage, those auspicious prizes were in two different areas: physics [1903] and chemistry [1911]. To this day, she’s the only person to have achieved this feat.
Like Leonardo Da Vinci, Copernicus, Benjamin Franklin and Jagdish Chandra Bose, Curie was a Polymath: a person of varied learning, with expertise in various subjects of study.
History shows us that those responsible for some of humanity’s greatest inventions and discoveries didn’t simply focus on one field of expertise. Instead, their intellect and curiosity compelled them to research, experiment, and study a broad area of enquiry. New perspectives and the application of thinking from one field of study to another drive innovation, creativity, and progress. These attributes are at the heart of good marketing. But where are our polymaths? Why is there so little movement of people between agencies of different persuasions?
Not sure I follow your line of reasoning, Nick. Only Marie Curie has won the Nobel in two different areas, you tell us – the other 900 winners were specialists. But then you say we need more polymaths.