The Phoenix edition of the Center's Great Ideas Conference is coming up in just about two weeks (February 13-15, 2005), and former Fast Company writer and Free Agent Nation author Dan Pink will be delivering the Monday keynote presentation, "Giving Your Organization a New Brain." (Dan also spoke at the Orlando edition of Great Ideas in December 2004, and I thought he was great.)
Anyway, Dan's presentation is based on his forthcoming book, A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age, which will be available in March. An excerpt from the book appears in the February 2005 issue of Wired magazine, and so I thought I'd bring it to the attention of TAIB readers who may be attending the conference or know people who will.
Dan's basic argument is that we can use the two hemispheres of the human brain as a metaphor for the change that is taking place in our society and that will need to take place in our organizations. According to Dan, the ascendance of Asia as a competitive outpost for highly routinized jobs, the advent of powerful computers that can crunch numbers better than any human being and the accessibility of material abundance that is inexorably degrading the underlying meaning of our lives, is powerful evidence of an emerging shift in the way we must think in order to succeed going forward.
In the years ahead, says the author, the much-prized logical and analytical skills of the left brain "information age" that is now on its way out, must be augmented by the skills and capabilities of the right brain "conceptual age" that will demand much greater levels of invention and empathy. As Dan writes,
To flourish in this age, we'll need to supplement our well-developed high tech abilities with aptitudes that are "high concept" and "high touch." High concept involves the ability to create artistic and emotional beauty, to detect patterns and opportunities, to craft a satisfying narrative, and to come up with inventions the world didn't know it was missing. High touch involves the capacity to empathize, to understand the subtleties of human interaction, to find joy in one's self and to elicit it in others, and to stretch beyond the quotidian in pursuit of purpose and meaning.
Is Dan right? Well, I suppose your immediate response depends on which hemisphere of your brain you tend to favor. But regardless of whether you're a left brain analytical type or a right brain creative type, there is something profoundly original and inherently intriguing about Dan's premise. I encourage you to read the excerpt and post your thoughts. Since I'll be blogging GIC Phoenix, I'll share some more perspectives from there in a couple of weeks. And I'll get a copy of Dan's book to read so I can share more ideas with you.
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