Knowledge Transfers

   Success in one field does not translate to expertise in another.
   A prominent surgeon, for example, may conclude that because he is expert in medicine he will also be successful in economics or politics.
   Granted, some folks do succeed in a new field as they retire from another and are intelligent and clever enough to be expert in more than one field. But there are no guarantees, even if the two or more fields are somehow related. And, of course, there is old proverb warning of those who become a "jack of all trades but master of none."
   This not to say there is no room for generalists, who develop a basic knowledge of many fields and are able to deal with developments in each of them. Such people are often found in journalism, where such general knowledge is important.
   Reporters, however, do not claim to be experts. Rather, they go to experts for information and interpretation and are able to understand to pass on to the public what the new developments are and what they mean.
   The danger is when an expert in one field believes he or she is therefore qualified to speak with equal qualification about an entirely different field.
   A mathematician, for example, deals with numbers and relationships. But so also does a corporate marketing executive, an advertising sales agent or an economics professor. Each may also know a good deal about several other fields, and may achieve a modicum of success in one before switching.
   A sales pitch often persuades many customers to buy the product or service, and by that measure the salesman is successful. But when the product or service turns out to be defective, the salesman simply transfers his pitching skills to a new product, abandoning the first one.
   Does that mean the salesman is successful? Yes. It also means that the customer may feel cheated.
   Nations are often plagued by a swarm of sales agents masquerading as experts in fields for which they not only have little knowledge or expertise, but are frankly ignorant. But because the size of an ego is important in sales, it can overwhelm any cautionary warning to be careful when entering a second field unrelated to the first.
   Government and economics, for example, when a successful real estate pitch man enters politics.