Think of a specialist as putting all your eggs in one basket, high risk high reward ratio. Generalist is like investing in an index, can’t go wrong most times, but you won’t hit any home runs
This is quite simplified, particularly the part that generalists can't hit a home run.
For example, David Epstein in his book (https://davidepstein.com/the-range/) talks about outsider advantage. Sometimes all specialists in the field have similar ideas, but an outsider can think about an interesting analogy to other problems that seem unrelated and come up with many novel solutions to difficult problems that seem highly specialized.
For example, David Epstein in his book (https://davidepstein.com/the-range/) talks about outsider advantage. Sometimes all specialists in the field have similar ideas, but an outsider can think about an interesting analogy to other problems that seem unrelated and come up with many novel solutions to difficult problems that seem highly specialized.