2008-2018 - Specialization continues to spread throughout industry and the professions.
GENERALLY: Professionals will have too much information for a generalist to keep up. Doctors, engineers, teachers, auto mechanics, and other crafts and professionals will move steadily into the study of one aspect of their profession. The general practitioner seems to be going the way of the village blacksmith.
The move toward specialization is evident. Consider the changes in the medical profession. The words, "I'll have to send you to a specialist" no longer have as dire connotations coming from one's treating physician as in the past. Patients expect special treatment fo rtheir specific ills. Doctors are responding to market demands to slip into a niche. Providers recognize that “customers” are attracted to “vendors” who can serve their specific need. Hospitals will advertise themselves as heart centers, women’s pavilions, cancer treatment, children's hospitals and traumatic injury centers. Medical treatment will present a menu to patients and their care managers as never before.
Other professionals, like engineers, will also struggle to keep up with changes in their profession. The half life of an engineer’s knowledge today is five years. In ten years, 90% of what engineers know will be available on the computer. Being a professional depends in part on being an expert in a field. When 90% of that knowledge is available to the general public, the professional must work to keep up with the latest to remain an expert.
In their article for The Futurist, Cetron and Davies believe that specialization will be a boon for niche market small businesses. It will also lead to career choices – as old specialties are no longer needed, successful professionals will be ready to move to new ones.
Artisans in construction are also creating specialty businesses - restoration of old buildings require experts in tin ceiling repair, tuck point brickwork, plaster reconstruction and architectural services. Auto mechanics will study and prepare to work on specific auto parts - transmissions - or only one model - the Lexus or Toyota.
The recent crane collapses in New York are a case in point. The cranes that collapsed had been inspected not long before they collapsed. However, the weaknesses that caused the cranes to fall could not be detected by the inspectors used by the city. Finding the weaknesses in a crane is a skill that inspectors who are generalists cannot do. What is needed is a cadre of experts who know what to look for before a crane crashes to the ground. New York has 200 cranes working at any one time – enough to keep a small niche business busy in the city.
IN KENTUCKY: Specialization will be a boon to urban areas. Regional medical centers , like Louisville and Lexington, will draw patients from a wide geographic area. Centering several hospitals, surrounded by medical offices offers a variety of specialists that will power the area economy.
Kentucky’s professionals make up 18.8 % of the population, according to 2006 Census Bureau data. Many of those professionals are located in the urban centers, near colleges and universities and in clusters and professional groups.
As far as small business niches, 10% of Kentuckians are self employed. Niches are springing up – businesses that specialize in providing cleaning supplies, providing financial and leisure products to professionals, transporting medical supplies or providing services to the barge industry are springing up around the Commonwealth.
The losers? Rural areas, continuing to lose population, will not be able to support specialists. Those living in rural areas will have the choice of traveling to urban centers, doing without, or moving closer to the city to get the services that their urban and suburban kinfolks take for granted.
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