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The Thing About Intersections and the Magic Therein

By Ian Ortega

When I was growing up, I was told that one needed to specialize (that was the message that was always drummed in my head). I was told that one couldn’t be a jack of all trades. And I found myself struggling. Struggling in the sense that I loved a diverse range of fields. For one, I couldn’t define myself as an arts person nor as a sciences person. I loved entrepreneurship, economics, commerce with the same zeal that I loved biology, physics, French, Christian Religious Education.

I didn’t understand why we had to drop subjects. To start to become one thing. Well, some people are lucky they can take on a specific circle. But for me, for many others, one circle wasn’t enough. I wanted that freedom to be a pilot, but also a philosopher. To be a spy, but also a businessman. If the world was a buffet, I wanted a taste of as many foods as I could. Why did I have to be one thing?

And so even at my Advanced Level, I settled for PEM/French. It’s the closest combination that came to merging fields. I could enjoy the sciences, and the arts. I didn’t have to be restricted to this one thing.

At University, I was in the Mechanical and Manufacturing engineering class, but I didn’t mind dropping into some lectures. I was curious about the handouts of other students. I wanted to know what was happening in the other departments, in the other faculties. I remember keeping close to the Food and Nutrition people, enjoying some of the foods they cooked. Going to meet the IT people, to know what breakthroughs were happening. No wonder, at the same time I ended up joining Daily Monitor as a freelance journalist. During day I wrote stories for Monitor, in the evening, I attended engineering lectures. I didn’t want to be contained; I couldn’t contain myself.

When I joined Uganda Breweries Limited (UBL), I crossed over from Engineering and had a year-long stint in marketing and innovation. Again, it was this inner struggle to accept this world of mine. Now I look back and realize, I was all fine, I was okay. There was life in the intersections. And once you see this world, you can’t unsee it. At UBL I ended up in many other intersections, call them Cross-functional teams (CFT), from a logistics CFT to a human capital CFT. The joys of intersections are unlimited.

Today, I run a company, Ortega Group aka O.G that is at the intersection of Innovation and Strategy. We thus define ourselves as an Innovation & Strategy Firm. What is going to come out of this? Unlimited upsides. There’s no cap to what can be done here.

What is the in-thing today? The intersection of Technology and Finance giving birth to FinTechs. What about Health and Technology? What about Health and Strategy? The organizations of the future must find an intersection and own it. What can you intersect? Think of the arts when they intersected with Technology and you had Steve Jobs leading that movement? What about Education and Innovation? What could arise from that intersection?

Again, more and more people should begin embracing intersections. The magic happens at intersections, these yin-yangs of life. And as we get bolder at occupying intersections, we can get better outcomes in our endeavours.