We live in an age of increased specialization: physicians who treat just one ailment, scholars who study just one period, network administrators who know just one operating system. However, researchers at MIT’s Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS) have shown that, in a number of different contexts, a little versatility could be a good thing. Their theoretical analyses could have implications for operations management, cloud computing—and possibly even healthcare delivery and manufacturing.

Take, for instance, a product-support call center for a company with a wide range of products. It’s far more cost-effective to train each customer service representative on the technical specifications of a single product than on all the products. But what if a bunch of calls about a product come in, and the center doesn’t have enough specialists to field them?

 …