Range: Why Savvy Freelancers Diversify

As part of our mission to inform and inspire freelancers, The Accidental Freelancer will now include reviews of books that we think do just that. The first book for this series is Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, in which David Epstein argues that breadth is essential for creative problem solving. To some extent, freelancers can be considered professional generalists. We build our careers by: 1) solving problems for different clients, 2) performing virtually all business functions to grow our companies, and 3) learning new skills to stay cutting edge. Here are four insights from Epstein’s research on range in general that shed some light on why freelancers thrive. 

1) Diverse individuals outperform diverse teams 

One of the surprising findings about range comes out of research from Professors Alva Taylor and Henrich Greve. They were curious about whether one individual who has experience in multiple fields can match or even exceed one group of experts from an equal number of fields. To ask the question using their comic book lingo, who is the better hero for creative work: Superman or the Fantastic Four? 

Here’s what they found:

“Individual creators started out with lower innovativeness than teams—they were less likely to produce a smash hit—but as their experience broadened, they actually surpassed teams: an individual creator who had worked in four or more genres was more innovative than a team whose members had collective experience across the same number of genres.” (Range, pp. 209-210)

Taylor and Greve believe the reason for this phenomenon may be that individuals can integrate their diverse experiences better than teams can. To put it plainly, when it comes to solving creative problems, the whole actually is greater than the sum of the parts.

The implications of this finding are exciting for freelancers, who have diversity built into their careers. Over the course of a typical year, freelancers might compare different legal structures for a new entity, learn about tax accounting, design a website, implement SEO, develop partnerships to get discovered, build a brand, pitch to new clients, negotiate with existing clients who do not pay—all on top of their actual consulting. Being a solopreneur means learning to wear multiple hats—and that may make freelancers more creative problem solvers in the long run.

2) Collaboration improves creative outcomes

If certain types of individual creators are better than teams, how does collaboration help or hurt the creative process? Research from Northwestern and Stanford explored these questions and found that diversity of collaborations increased creative outcomes. Epstein summarizes these studies and includes examples ranging from Broadway productions to scientific journals and draws the conclusion that new combinations were essentially a fuel for creativity. 

In sociologist Brian Uzzi’s words, by collaborating with new partners, creators can “take ideas that are conventions in one area and bring them into a new area, where they’re suddenly seen as invention,” which turns creativity into an “import/export business of ideas.” (p. 280) Epstein also cites Oliver Smithies’ “advice to bring new skills to an old problem or a new problem to old skills” for a more creative result. (p. 281)

Why is this a good finding for freelancers? The very nature of freelancing requires collaboration with external partners. Of course, the type of collaboration and client base matters. Collaborating with the same set of partners, according to Luis A. Nunes Amaral and Brian Uzzi’s research, may allow for efficiency and comfort. This is great for establishing a stable freelancing business. But the greatest “creative triumph[s]” came from individuals who “moved easily among teams, crossing organizational and disciplinary boundaries and finding new collaborators” (p. 280).

To extend this line of thought, freelancers who are continually learning new skills and offering services in multiple areas rather than a singular niche may be setting themselves up for greater creative output in the long run, in addition to diversifying their income in the short run. 

3) Novices make better predictions than experts

Now, you might have read the first two points of this article and thought, “that’s great, but my work isn’t creative!” I’d disagree with you there, but there are analytical benefits to range as well. A surprising finding Epstein describes is the tendency for novices to outperform so-called experts when it comes to forecasting the future—especially within the experts’ own areas of expertise.

Professor Philip Tetlock did some of the key research in this area, exploring predictions about the Soviet Union. His research uncovered different categories of experts, which he described as “hedgehogs” and “foxes”. 

Hedgehogs:  Their area of expertise is both narrow and deep They “fashioned tidy theories of how the world works through the single lens of their specialty, and then bent every event to fit them.” 

Foxes: These are “integrators who ‘know many little things…from an eclectic array of traditions and accept ambiguity and contradiction.’” (p. 221)

According to Tetlock’s findings, the hedgehogs did not fare well when it came to making predictions in their area of expertise—and their performance worsened the more experience and credentials they gained in their specialty. (p. 221) The foxes, by contrast, managed to integrate different perspectives and recognize underlying complexity for situations that looked like cause-and-effect. (p. 229)

What does this mean for freelancers? There is no guarantee that freelancers are always foxes, but freelancers are constantly exploring different domains and exposing themselves to a range of information and perspectives we can eventually integrate. This happens each time they gain a new client, and it also happens each time they need to learn a new business function to grow their fledgling companies. And, for those who aren’t natural foxes, Tetlock’s research shows that as little as an hour of training improved hedgehogs’ predictions by helping them explore the structural similarities between situations where the details were very different.

4) Where to find the most innovative people

Epstein does not investigate whether the most creative problem solvers are also more likely to be self-employed, but there are at least two reasons to suspect this may be the case.

First, the tendency of individuals with “range” is to pursue multiple interests. That tendency naturally lends itself well to freelancing, whether full- or part-time. 

Second, many big companies are not actively looking for the most innovative candidates. Epstein describes the research of Abbie Griffin and her coauthors in their book, Serial Innovators. As Epstein describes, Griffin and her team “are concerned that HR policies at mature companies have such well-defined, specialized slots for employees that potential serial innovators will look like ‘round pegs to the square holes’ and get screened out” (p. 213). In fact, Griffin’s team interviewed many serial innovators who said they would not have been hired if they applied to their company today. 

Griffin writes, “‘A mechanistic approach to hiring, while producing highly reproducible results, in fact reduces the numbers of high potential [for innovation] candidate.” (p. 213). To remedy overly narrow hiring practices, her team advised companies to look for “wide ranging interests” and “multiple hobbies and avocations”. (p. 213).

More research is needed, but Range is a compelling read and necessary antidote for the notion that becoming a top performer requires early specialization to hone a narrow skillset. Depending on your goals, early specialization may actually be harmful—especially if it comes before you have had a chance to accurately inventory your skills and interests. Fortunately, freelancing is inherently a generalist endeavor and might be just the remedy your creativity needs. 

Found a book you think freelancers should know about? Make a recommendation in the comments!