Michael Jordan is one of basketball’s all-time greatest players. In 1993, to the surprise of many, he retired from the National Basketball Association (NBA) and attempted to apply his athletic skills to the sport of baseball. Some pundits wondered if Jordan could become as dominant in baseball as he had been in basketball. After he spent one year in baseball’s minor leagues, the answer was a clear no. It was evident that Jordan was not going to make the All-Star Team in baseball anytime soon.

In 1995 Jordan returned to the NBA, which was his domain of expertise. In the three years that followed, he led the league in scoring and guided the Chicago Bulls to three consecutive national championships. Simply stated, expertise is nontransferable. Becoming an expert in one domain does not make a person an expert in another. Rarely can a person rise to the highest ranks of dominance in one field and then quickly replicate that dominance in an entirely different domain. Studies have shown that skill and knowledge in one area seldom qualify a person for excellence in a second domain.

The implications of this may be obvious, but they are worthy of mention. Just because an expert can perform open heart surgery does not mean they can fly an airplane. Just because an expert can configure a web server so that it is impervious to hackers does not mean they can design a microprocessor. And just because an expert can perform brilliantly on the Broadway stage does not mean they are proficient at politics or public policy.

Of course, the opposite is also true. Expertise in one domain does not automatically preclude expertise in another. Given enough time and practice, Michael Jordan may have become a world-class baseball player. We simply do not know. A heart surgeon can learn to fly an airplane and a web security expert can learn to design microprocessors. Expertise in one domain does not mean people should automatically grant you homage in a different domain, but it also doesn’t rule out expertise in another. Just because expertise does not automatically transfer doesn’t mean that it cannot be replicated.