Weekly Roundup: Meet-Ups, Web3 & Deep-Generalists
What we learned together on Network Capital this week
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Dear community members,
Hope you had a rejuvenating weekend. This is a quick overview of the week gone by on Network Capital. You can get access to all our offerings once you subscribe.
🏁 Registrations open for the Writing Fellowship + Deep Generalist Fellowship
🧑🤝🧑 Offline events & meet-ups: Delhi, London, Seattle, & Hyderabad
💰New subgroup: Crypto & Web3
✨Making Network Capital Need-Blind
💌 Newsletters: What's my biggest success? What am I most proud of?, “In the same way sound isn’t music, traffic isn’t audience.”, and The future of offline events and in-person meetups
Deep-Generalist Fellowship
In most modern workplaces, a disproportionate emphasis is paid on having narrow skills that are marketable. While there is nothing wrong having an area of focus, one should be mindful of the perils of early specialization.
There are three key reason for that.
We tend to specialize without knowing why. More than 80% of people work in areas that have nothing to do with their field of study.
It hinders lateral thinking, a problem-solving approach that draws upon seemingly disparate concepts and domains. Most innovators are lateral thinkers. Their lateral thinking is a direct result of combining different strands of thoughts and learning from different contexts.
People with a narrow set of skills tend to approach every problem through the same lens. This not only ignores loopholes in one’s hypothesis but also amplifies biases. As investor Charlie Munger puts it, “To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail."
Deep-Generalists are people who combine two or more diverse domains and integrate them into something defensible and unique. These are the professionals who will push the boundaries for creativity and innovation in the AI era. Their competitive advantage will propel them to learn, unlearn and develop innovative solutions consistently.
Writing Fellowship
No one is born a great writer. We become better with deliberate practice, a special type of practice that is both purposeful and systematic. While regular practice might include mindless repetitions, deliberate practice requires focused attention and is conducted with the specific goal of improving performance. In the Network Capital Writing Fellowship, you will engage in deliberate practice as a community.
Starts November 26, 2021, join in!
Offline events
Last week Network Capital London members celebrated Diwali together over great food & interesting conversations.
As the boundary between online and IRL (in real life) blurs and we are likely to witness hybrid forms of engagement. In the Network Capital universe, this comes in form city meet-ups. In coming weeks, we have events planned in Delhi, Seattle, & Hyderabad.
New Subgroup: Web3 & Crypto
Network Capital subgroups are an intimate and curated way for connecting with other people over shared interests. Last week we launched a new subgroup(!!) - Web3 & Crypto. If interested, join here!
Making Network Capital Need-Blind
Talent is equally distributed, opportunities are not. Today we are taking another step towards making Network Capital need-blind with the help of our patron and subscriber Siddhartha Chaturvedi, an INSEAD graduate working as the Director of Innovation and Society at Microsoft.
Read more about why he is gifting 10 annual subscriptions to those who need mentorship but can’t afford Network Capital. We deeply appreciate the gesture and look forward to doing everything it takes to bridge the talent-opportunity mismatch - step by step, ferociously.
Newsletter
What's my biggest success? What am I most proud of?
My relationships are my superpower. They are not perfect - not a bundle of roses by any stretch of imagination. They are real and constitute all the ups and downs of life. What’s worked well for me is assuming good intent and answering questions with clarity and conviction.
Tell the truth, trust the people has been my mantra.
“In the same way sound isn’t music, traffic isn’t audience.”
Every creator needs an audience and traffic isn’t audience. Doing something provocative for the heck of it is likely to backfire. Instead of trying to get fleeting traffic to our platform or performance, we need to develop a plan of action.
The future of offline events and in-person meetups
The boundary between online and IRL (in real life) is blurring and we are likely to witness hybrid forms of engagement. In this digitally mediated world, there will be a premium on quality in-person meetups, interactions and experiences. This presents an opportunity for organizations and for individuals who enjoy bringing people together.
An Invitation to Network Capital
Not a subscriber? Intrigued by Network Capital? Now would be a good time to subscribe.
💝 If you want to learn how to navigate the Network Capital ecosystem, please read this article.
✍🏼 Read our founder Utkarsh Amitabh’s Harvard Business Review articles here Building Your Category of One, Should You Choose Passion Over Paycheck, How to Make Envy Work for You?, and The Right Way to Make a Big Career Transition
💞 Read our founder Utkarsh Amitabh’s book Seductive Illusion of Hard Work. The foreword written by Klaus Schwab, the founder of World Economic Forum.