The late legendary adman (and ad critic) Howard Gossage was a generalist. Interestingly, the 'Socrates of San Francisco' even ran a consultancy firm called Generalists, Inc. As noted at an online tribute and term paper (?) by Meenakshi Gautam of the University of Texas, Gossage's "multi-faceted persona and ability to assimilate new ideas from diverse fields made his advertising philosophy so enduring and far ahead of its times." And a core part of his philosophy was based on the idea of the "Extra-environmental Man," an individual who is capable of breaking the bounds of his environment and seeing the world afresh.
Gautam notes: He propounded that creativity comes best from 'extra-environmental man' in a talk given at the Art Directors Club in Frankfurt, then West Germany (He crammed German lessons daily for three weeks, and gave the talk in German).
Creativity according to him began with the ability to recognize what was already there, and those who were stuck with their load of 'experience' experience could not see it. He believed that the best art, the best ads came from people who tended to be extra-environmental. They were either from another culture, another country, or men who got into the business late in life after doing much else. Also they approached a problem from outside its environment rather than from inside. He called it generalism, as opposed to specialism. A generalist starts from the outside while a specialist works from the inside.
(Thanks Dave!)
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