A Whole New Mind

In A Whole New Mind Dan Pink starts by exploring the shift between four major historical 'ages':
Agricultural --> Industrial --> Information --> shifting to today's Conceptual Age

Pink refers to three major trends pointing towards the future of business and the economy:
1. Abundance (consumers have too many choices)
2. Asia (outsourced labor and knowledge)
3. Automation (computerization, robots, processes)

Three crucial questions every business person should ask are:
Can a computer do it faster?
Is what I'm offering in demand in an age of abundance?
Can someone overseas do it cheaper?

Creativity becomes the competitive edge that can differentiate commodities.
Design - Moving beyond function to engage the sense.
Story - Narrative added to products and services - not just argument.
Symphony - Adding invention and big picture thinking (not just detail focus).
Empathy - Going beyond logic and engaging emotion and intuition.
Play - Bringing humor and light-heartedness to business and products.
Meaning - Immaterial feelings and values of products.

I created a summary mural to capture these main points in a big picture.

Comments

[Jari Chevalier]

Hey--nice drawing summarizing A Whole New Mind! Do you see evidence of the trends on which Dan Pink is reporting in your business? If so, how are these trends showing up?

If you'd like to hear Dan Pink talk about how and where these trends are showing themselves, I'm going to be speaking with him for my February podcast and you can get the feed or subscribe on my site.

It's all pretty fascinating and I hope it will mean big changes in education and in the workplace--and we should live long enough to see the fruits of it!

Jariscope.com

[Kate Mullen]

Thank you for the comments Jari. I have seen evidence of both automation and globalization in the financial services industry. The banks are moving certain job classes to India such as customer service and other operations support areas to achieve greater efficiencies.

I am also seeing indications that long verbose requirements documents are not enough to successfully execute a project. Storytelling and big picture visuals are starting to appear to help bring everyone together on the same page. No one reads all of the documents that are required by the oversight/governance groups. There has to be a way to better communicate the big picture first; and then break things into manageable bite size pieces without producing reams of documents. There is a place in a project for the details as well - but more is needed upfront to simply relay the project's objectives.

I look forward to your interview and will post it here on the blog.