Multipotentiality

Transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING]
NARRATOR
A multipotentialite is someone with many interests and creative pursuits. It's a mouthful to say, and it might help if you break it up into three parts, multi, potential, and ite. You can also use one of the other terms that mean something similar, such as Polymath, the Renaissance person.
During the Renaissance period, it was considered the ideal to be well-versed in multiple disciplines. Multi potentialities have super powers. The first of these super powers is idea synthesis. That is, combining two or more fields and creating something new at the intersection. This means innovation can happen at intersections. That's where new ideas come from. And multipotentialites, with all of their backgrounds, are able to access a lot of these points of intersection.
The second multipotentialite super power is rapid learning. When multipotentialites become interested in something, they go hard. They observe everything they can get their hands on. They're used to being beginners because they've been beginners so many times in the past. And this means that they're less afraid of trying new things and stepping out of comfort zones. What's more, many skills are transferable across disciplines, and multipotentialites bring everything they've learned to every new area they pursue, so they're rarely starting from scratch.
The third multipotentialite super power is adaptability. That is, the ability to morph into whatever is needed in a given situation. Idea synthesis, rapid learning, and adaptability, three skills that multipotentialites are very adept at, and three skills that they might lose if pressured to narrow their focus.
As a society, we have a vested interest in encouraging multipotentialites to be themselves. We have a lot of complex, multidimensional problems in the world right now, and we need creative, out-of-the-box thinkers to tackle them. Wapnick 2017.

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