My opinion based having always been a multidisciplinary generalist spanning hardware, software and mechanical design forever:
While launching or validating, being a generalist (or having a small team of generalists) can be a huge advantage. Massive. However, you are going nowhere fast with generalization. You need to divest yourself of subject area responsibilities as quickly as practical by bringing in a team of specialists. An accomplished generalist can be very effective at managing such a team due to having a good understanding of each of the pieces.
You need people who will give specific areas of your business a focused approach full time as opposed to time-slicing your business.
Scenario: You can code, assemble electronics, test, develop the website, sell, run quickbooks and ship. Great! You should not run the business this way for too long. Maybe while you are in the garage. Almost anyone will agree that getting a real accountant ASAP is a no-brainer. As the business grows you should replace yourself for each of the above tasks by hiring specialists. Either you pick one area to focus on or take on a supervisory position running the operation. Nothing else will allow you to scale.
In general terms, I don't see teams of generalists being a good thing at all. For a rapid product development or launch, yeah, sure. To run and grow a company for ten years or more? No way. Bad idea.
These have been my exact thoughts as I've started working with Arduinos and looked into starting a robotics shop -- I can learn to do everything, etch frame solder code make each component myself, but I get passed up by teams of specialists like the Spark Core [1], who are focusing solely on that component.
Thinking of times when I've worked on teams, I've succeeded because I could leverage the synergy of my multiple disciplines, excuse me, because I could take ideas from different fields and use them together. But teams of generalists are just wasting their time, as each generalist will just be specializing in one area or another, and a specialist in that field would be more effective.
Generalists do make good managers, teachers, librarians, etc.
While launching or validating, being a generalist (or having a small team of generalists) can be a huge advantage. Massive. However, you are going nowhere fast with generalization. You need to divest yourself of subject area responsibilities as quickly as practical by bringing in a team of specialists. An accomplished generalist can be very effective at managing such a team due to having a good understanding of each of the pieces.
You need people who will give specific areas of your business a focused approach full time as opposed to time-slicing your business.
Scenario: You can code, assemble electronics, test, develop the website, sell, run quickbooks and ship. Great! You should not run the business this way for too long. Maybe while you are in the garage. Almost anyone will agree that getting a real accountant ASAP is a no-brainer. As the business grows you should replace yourself for each of the above tasks by hiring specialists. Either you pick one area to focus on or take on a supervisory position running the operation. Nothing else will allow you to scale.
In general terms, I don't see teams of generalists being a good thing at all. For a rapid product development or launch, yeah, sure. To run and grow a company for ten years or more? No way. Bad idea.