Those who manage to get to the top of their game do so by keeping up with advances across many fields, because principles and concepts developed in one area can be applied elsewhere. In my field, for example, advances in radio and microwave research, such as double resonance methods and multi-pulse approaches, are finding their way into optical spectroscopy. In short, it often pays to widen one’s focus. Yet, in academia at least, the system almost seems organized to frustrate this. We divide into mass spectrometry, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) or infrared spectroscopy researchers (I could go on): it’s quite plain to see that the majority of us concentrate on one area, and it is mainly because of the instrumentation that we have access to in our labs. That’s a serious practical limitation: if you’re doing Raman spectroscopy, it’s not easy to get into NMR even if you see a need. Cost is an issue.