Specialization Trap

A craftsman becomes excellent at one thing. Their reputation grows. Demand for that thing increases. They do more of it, getting better still. Other skills atrophy; new skills aren’t learned. They become the best at something increasingly narrow. If that thing stops mattering, they have nothing else. Expertise became a prison cell built one brick at a time.

This is the specialization trap: success in a niche creates incentives that deepen commitment to that niche, making adaptation harder even as it becomes more necessary. The expert didn’t plan obsolescence; they just responded to signals that now point off a cliff.

The mechanism is path dependence plus local optima. Early success creates increasing returns: more practice, more reputation, more demand. Each step makes the current path more valuable relative to alternatives. The cost of switching grows. Eventually the specialist is so far up one mountain they can’t see other mountains exist.

Markets accelerate this. Specialists can charge premiums. Generalists look unfocused. Division of labor rewards going narrow. The logic is sound until the category collapses — and categories collapse faster in changing environments.

Partial remedies exist. Deliberate cross-training in adjacent skills. Portfolio thinking: not just one bet, but a range. Maintaining optionality even at efficiency’s cost. Recognizing when comparative advantage has become comparative lock-in.

The deeper lesson: sustainable excellence requires slack for exploration, not just exploitation. The expert who never experiments becomes fragile. The organization that only optimizes the current game loses when the game changes. antifragility in careers and companies means resisting the pull toward ever-narrower mastery.