DailyPost 2014
EXPERTISE AGGREGATION
What is expertise aggregation is question we are faced with? It is bringing together of complementary and supplementary expertise, mainly within an organization or similar organizations to fulfil the task assigned in an effective manner. Sometimes you might need expertise of professionals from dissimilar organisations. Today’s problem statements and requirements have changed considerably and has already moved in the direction of becoming interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary variant of the earlier. The New Education Policy has brought this realisation to the micro level, a student will the liberty to select any combination of subjects or expertise, which from his point of view, ideally suits his requirements.
As you move further, nothing can be achieved without expertise aggregation. Most of the forward-looking tasks remain unattended because the expertise is lacking. If you have no knowledge of an area or expertise, you will never know how to utilize it, when it is required. With every area becoming tech enabled, and maintenance of gadgets and systems have become critical, licenses come as a burden in the capital cost. Do we even think of bringing in this expertise during the procurement process to optimize cost and also get a better operations and maintenance deal. The best example of expertise aggregation is the team of surgeons and other specialists for performing complicated and major surgeries. To perform a successful feat, it starts with the expertise mapping of what is required?
Each expert’s task is clearly demarcated, and normally they have to stick to that. But such surgeries have their own issues, which keeps baffling the team. It is their aggregated expertise, which helps them come out with flying colours. There is a leader who puts the whole exercise together, but every member is an expert and his expertise is critical to the operation. You replicate this scenario into any area of operation, and you realize the expertise lacunae. Expertise aggregation as a concept has never been thought of, so you end up managing whatever you have. Organizations have not managed to upgrade even the most important of its capabilities, that is expertise and have also not created avenues of getting it from outside. Expertise mapping is not done for any task or project, it goes on in the conventional, beaten path style.
If expertise is obtained at times, it is more for show. It does not fit into any of the mapped requirements for any given purpose, that is if any mapping is done. The expert or expertise is just showcased as a selling pitch of the organization. When expertise aggregation does not happen, there is no healthy competition. The so-called experts in an organization rule the roost and start claiming competence of being able to do everything. In reality because of this environment, their expertise starts dwindling. When the world of expertise is moving at an exponential pace, even their conventional skills slowly become valueless. From academic institutions to research bodies, from government to public sector, to a large part of the industry, it is not happening anywhere. We are gaping at our decadent future.
EXPERTISE AGGREGATION IS THE TRUE GROWTH POTENTIAL OF THE NATION, BOTTOM TO TOP.
Sanjay Sahay