The most important task in business is to help multi-passionate people to be multi-passionate.

Think about this: Einstein, Newton, Leonardo da Vinci W Edwards Deming, Steve Jobs and Ray Kroc were all mutlipassionate. Think about this too: do you think that it was a coincidence that the Renaissance which was a time when people were expected to be diversified in their learning was also the time of an explosion of discovery and thought?The other day, I read something that claimed that creativity will be the number one requirement for businesses in the Twenty First Century. Is creativity really possible when you restrict it to a single passion? That creativity is essential is not a new idea. There is an anecdote about Henry Ford which I have not been able to verify. It goes like this,

One day, Henry Ford employed a consultant to look at everyone and see if they were working properly. At the end of the research, the consultant came to see Henry Ford with his report,

"Well everyone seems to be doing what they should apart from this one guy who spends all day in his office, with his feet up on the desk looking at the ceiling."

"Leave him alone," said Ford, "he came up with a million dollar idea doing just that thing. If I let him carry on, he may come up with another million dollar idea. But if he doesn't, so what? He's already more than covered his wages for life."

The reason why multi-passionate people have this massive advantage in business can be illustrated with a simple story from my past.

When I was at secondary school (I think you call it high school), I would get in early and do some extra work in the school library. One day, a hot chick called Clare found me and asked me for some help with math. Was I going to turn her down, no way! After a few attempts I realised what the problem was: she was defeating herself by the way she looked at math. So I changed her perspective. I said,

"Stop thinking of math as a science and instead think of it as a very simple language - which is actually all it is. X=2Y is just short hand for take any number and double it. That's all math is -  a shorthand for language, and you are good at languages." She got it. And so did all her equally hot friends. A week later,every morning, I was surrounded by the schools' hottest chicks talking math - its a nerd's fantasy. The guys would all bug me for my secret with the girls and I would whisper,

"I'm binomial" and they would back away and say "We always knew you were kinky".

So by using the structure of one discipline (language), on a different discipline (math), I was able to get people to look at in a different way that eliminated the obstacle. Sadly though, it didn't get me any dates because I became a "friend", sigh.
Another area of interest for me is cybernetics (as in cyborg). This is a multidisciplinary subject where you purposely look at the same problem using different structures and learn new things with each new way you look at it. What? A science where you are expected to think differently about a problem, Yeessss!

Credit: Image available as a wallpaper from Wall.Alphacoders.com