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What would be a better word to use than "nicheification"? In the article here, there's one sentence that says

Furthermore, when your entire career has been structured around nicheification, there's little potential for leadership or management, skills that are learned rather than innate, and generally ignored when your search targets a niche player.

I searched for this word using define:nicheification on Google, and it doesn't seem to exist.

Thanks.

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    Reminds me of the saying: "An expert is somebody who spends their life learning more and more about less and less, until they know absolutely everything about nothing."
    – Jim
    Commented Apr 12, 2012 at 4:33

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As suggested in the title of the article, "specialization".

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If you spell it nichification, you do find it in some dictionaries. The author may have been relying on spell checkers, and I suspect even the correct version wasn't on his spell checker.

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    The links you referred to had nichification listed as something about a loan. This doesn't even come close.
    – chuacw
    Commented Apr 12, 2012 at 21:55
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The author puts it in quotes in his first use (second paragraph) to indicate that it is a word that he has made up. It appears to mean a focus on niche skills rather than competent learning abilities.

A more generally used term that could have been substituted might be niche skills.

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There is no better word to use than nicheification. This neologism is nicely introduced and explained in the article. What we have here is practically a textbook example of how to insert your neologism into discourse, and the author should be applauded.

Unlike specialization, nicheification carries that added connotation of painting oneself into a corner, which is exactly what is desired.

(An alternative point of view to the article is that as a niche player your chances of surviving the next round of corporate restructuring go up. A lovely short-short story by Georg M. Oswald in last week's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung satirizes this outlook on life. It's in German but since it's only a page long I can summarize the plot: Timid guy trembles as he is called into boss's office, expecting to get the axe. Boss tells him he's safe because he is a "niche man" -- the type of individual who seeks out a spot of terrain that no one will contest (because it is unattractive). Timid guy slinks back to his desk, thinks about phoning his wife to complain, but soon goes back to working as usual.)

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"niche exploitation" is another possible replacement

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"Building a niche" is another alternative.

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