Domain knowledge is valuable as you can wield it as opportunities arise to great effect. This lets you leap frog problems by applying known solutions. There's risk of being blind to novel approaches that require innovation.

Being capable of tackling problems from first principles is invaluable because we frequently encounter problems that are novel in some dimension, even if that dimension is the combination of dimensions. This lets you leap frog large problems by decomposition, possibly going against the grain and innovating by, hopefully, simplifying. However there is risk in falling into traps that countless others have already learned the hard way.

This may come as a surprise to some but, believe it or not, you can have both. In fact, you should.