For most of human history, curiosity has been treated like a liability.

Jack of all trades, master of none.

Conventional wisdom suggested that you go to school, choose a major, secure a job in a specific lane, play office politics to climb the ladder, and eventually retire comfortably with a great sense of pride in your straight line.

This concept is a relic of the factory economy, not the one we’re wading through now. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Millennials have held an average of 9 different jobs by the age of 36.

In the Industrial Age, efficiency mattered more than personal fulfillment, output mattered more than curiosity, and people were trained to operate like interchangeable parts in a machine.  Curiosity was for the misfits, the artists, those with undiagnosed ADHD.

Spend time in any start-up environment or creative enterprise and you’ll quickly see how antiquated this mode of thinking has become over the past decade. Compound this with a thriving gig economy, the cost of higher education, relative upward economic immobility and a workforce tempted by the grass is greener algorithm, and you’ve got a recipe for an explosion of omnidirectional career paths. And more so than ever, people are becoming sole proprietor consultants and seeking alternative modes of wealth generation.

The Information Age favors those who can think across domains, connect ideas, and adapt faster to emerging technologies than others; an age where curiosity reigns supreme. The old model rewarded specialization, but the new world order rewards an opening of the aperture — consideration of broader context.

The old model rewarded specialization, but the new world order rewards an opening of the aperture…

When we started Brand Knew nearly 17 years ago, every mentor or source of experience that I spoke with cautioned against offering too many things to too many people. Zach of all trades, they offered cautiously. We can’t possibly offer branding and design services, while offering engineering services, while offering marketing services, while offering paid media services, to movie studios, to nonprofits, to consumer brands. We’d spread ourselves too thin.

“Study Pentagram!”

This perceived weakness has turned out to be our superpower.  Because it’s the ability to connect different things in service of a cohesive plan that germinates fertile ground for growth in this attention economy.  It’s the connective tissue that matters.

When a financial services company comes to us to help sign up more customers, we employ a full funnel approach in partnership with the P&L owners, which means we have to understand each component that will register more customers, for less money.

The same applies when a skincare brand engages us to brand build. Or a museum opens a new exhibit and wants the world to know about it. Or a politician wants to get elected. Or a sports betting app is in search of first time depositors.

Of course, the Brand Knew apparatus is an extension of my formative years and experiences — I loved to creatively write, but I also loved to tinker with software, but I also loved studying art and design, but I also loved understanding how ideas came to market, but I was also curious about how influence developed and permeated.

And my story isn’t special. Every person working at Brand Knew is insatiably curious. It doesn’t mean everyone is in an ADHD spin of competing interests each day. Our engineers have a design sensibility. Our design team deeply understands marketing. Our paid media team understands the essence of the design practice.

Children tend to inadvertently learn a little about a lot. And that’s what we endeavor to do… as adults. We are a company of perpetual students, across dozens of subjects. And we spend as much time learning as we do executing. Over nearly 17 years, Brand Knew has become the vessel for our unyielding curiosities.

And we now find ourselves living in a moment that rewards curiosity and the kind of broad interest spectrum that we’ve traditionally been encouraged to suppress. This is great news because being narrowly focused and doing the same thing every single day is genuinely unhealthy — it was productive for the industrial systems we come from, but not for our personal operating systems.

While hyper-specialized people can execute well, emerging AI systems are becoming increasingly good at completing much of this specialized work. And more important than what specialists can do is what capable and supremely curious people can do… orchestrate.

The ultimate moat becomes mastery of connective tissue.

As tools are increasingly inexpensive, knowledge becomes abundant and execution automates, the ultimate moat becomes mastery of connective tissue.

America is headed towards a more rigid caste system as opportunity concentrates.  Understanding a variety of domains is empowering and exposes you less to other people’s interpretations of the world.  It better positions you to see patterns and make meaningful connections, which is where real value is born. Anyone with decades of work life remaining needs to get comfortable teaching themselves, following their own interests and relying on their own judgment.  Where we’re headed, this is the only path towards leverage and eventual financial freedom.

Our edge is no longer what we know. It’s how we connect what we know.

A designer who understands psychology sees behavior differently.
A marketer who understands philosophy sells differently.
A founder who understands culture builds differently.

The future doesn’t belong to specialists. It belongs to people who master connective tissue. Specialization can still matter. But specialization without synthesis is precision without impact.

Curiosity isn’t a distraction anymore.

It’s the credential.

Zach Suchin,
CEO, Brand Knew