<p class="p1">Expertise is a perception of certain signs that suggest someone possesses knowledge or ideas that are worth paying for. You can have valuable knowledge and ideas while never being considered an expert. </p>
<p class="p1">I recently met with a VP of innovation at a qualitative marketing research firm. He wanted to provide insight into how I could develop a career as an insightful marketing expert. A career where people pay you because they <strong>believe</strong> you possess enough skill and specialized knowledge that your insights will pay dividends. Their belief that you possess qualities that make your opinion worthwhile is largely based on signals they interpret to qualify and quantify your value. </p>
<p class="p1">In a lot of cases these signals are the types of companies you’ve worked for. In most cases the attitude is the bigger the better. It is better to have worked on a minute part of an international brand than to have managed the entire branding for a local brand or start-up business. In other words a smaller drop in a bigger pond allows you to make a bigger splash. </p>
<p class="p1">Degrees, certificates, and association memberships largely work the same way. They qualify you as a capable professional with the right designations to suggest they’ve invested in developing their expertise. </p>
<p class="p1">My issue is that we qualify people to provide insight on emerging consumption patterns who have never been trained to understand them. In a lot of cases the contextual value of certain experiences can be limited in understanding other phenomena. Furthermore, we qualify them based on the discourse (brand/company/product) they contributed to rather than what they contributed to the discourse. </p>
<p class="p1">Expertise is very valuable, the current process of developing expertise is tremendously costly. This isn’t to say MBA’s or that junior low paid positions doing small work for big client aren’t valuable. It is saying that perhaps a culture shift is necessary to recognize the expertise and value of people without the typical signals of expertise and their tremendous potential to provide unique insights. </p>