In the words of Hal Varian, the key to success is to have scarce factors of production that are highly complementary to something that's ubiquitous and cheap. In Google's case, information is ubiquitous and cheap, but a quality search engine is scarce. In my case, I am thinking of what scarce factors of production I might be able to apply to information.
Although Scott Adams always says not to take career advice from a cartoonist, he offers up a well-reasoned argument:
Capitalism rewards things that are both rare and valuable. You make yourself rare by combining two or more “pretty goods” until no one else has your mix. [...] At least one of the skills in your mixture should involve communication, either written or verbal. And it could be as simple as learning how to sell more effectively than 75% of the world. That’s one. Now add to that whatever your passion is, and you have two, because that’s the thing you’ll easily put enough energy into to reach the top 25%. If you have an aptitude for a third skill, perhaps business or public speaking, develop that too.
It sounds like generic advice, but you’d be hard pressed to find any successful person who didn’t have about three skills in the top 25%.
My current thought is that I'd like to become pretty good at writing, and then combine this with visual analytics and a somewhat specialized knowledge of information economics and genomics. If any readers have thoughts or suggestions, I'd love to hear them.
One thing I worry about with these courses of study is that they are all pretty new to graduate curriculums and I need to be wary that I am not falling for any fads.
Craig Newmark points to a quote from Joel Best's Flavor of the Month: Why Smart People Fall for Fads:
Department chairs attend many meetings at which the future is unveiled, priorities are articulated, and innovations are announced. Over the years, I have been assured that our university—if not all of higher education— was about to be transformed by affirmative action, the Pacific Rim, assessment, active learning, cooperative learning, distance learning, service learning, problem-based learning, responsibility-based management, zero-based budgeting, broadening the general education requirements, narrowing the general education requirements, capstone courses, writing across the curriculum, multicultural education, computer networking, the Internet, water (don’t ask), critical thinking, quantitative reasoning, and I don’t know what else. I have gone on retreats; participated in program reviews; served on task forces; puzzled over mission statements; written five-year plans, three-year plans, and niche reports; and listened to proclamations from provosts, assistant provosts, deans, associate deans, and wannabe deans. I have been assured with tight-lipped seriousness: “This is not a fad.” Still, after all these amazing transformations, today’s universities do not seem all that different than they were when I was a student.
Thoughts, please?
