Sunday, February 7, 2010

Reaction to A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink

A Whole New Mind By Daniel Pink 2005

  • Information Age to a Conceptual Age economy
  • Observational Non-Fiction
  • Pink's brain scanned as part of a project conducted at the National Institute of Mental Health in Washington D.C.
  • Shares his experience to illustrate normal brain function, misconceptions about the way the brain divides work
  • Most people integrate both left and right brain activity, R-Directed Thinking will increasingly be relied upon in the future, by people that want to succeed in business or life.
  • America's economy is currently organized around accountants, doctors, engineers, executives and lawyers.
  • "Knowledge workers" excel at the ability to acquire and marry facts to data, and these abilities are typically good for standardized testing
  • Outsourcing of white-collar jobs (knowledge work) to nations in Asia will have profound "long term effects" on the economic well-being of Western countries
  • Factory jobs flowed out of the country during the eighties, globalization of white-collar jobs will soon follow
  • Need to come up with a new skill set that is not abundant overseas
  • Abundance and Asia aren't transforming America, rest assured that Automation is.
  • Transaction jobs soon start declining.
  • Can computers do it faster?
  • Can overseas labor do it cheaper?
  • Are your skills in demand?
  • Are your skills overly abundant?
  • Eventually we'll all have to find new jobs, Pink theorizes.
  • The Agricultural Age and Industrial Age have fallen away, and the Information Age is fading fast.
  • We're hurtling into the Conceptual Age, where the majority of jobs will be held by people that create something, or by people that are capable of empathizing with others. Most of these jobs will require care, humor, imagination, ingenuity, instinct, joyfulness, personal rapport, or social dexterity.
  • MBA vs. MFA
  • IQ and Emotional Intelligence
  • Baby Boom Generation-newfound gravitation toward meaning and transcendence, and away from the allure of wealth.

A historical narrative starts the book outlining four major 'ages':

1. Agricultural Age (farmers)

2. Industrial Age (factory workers)

3. Information Age (knowledge workers)

4. Conceptual Age (creators and empathizers)

L-Directed Thinking in America and the economy is diminishing due to:

1. Abundance (consumers have too many choices, nothing is scarce)

2. Asia (everything that can be outsourced, is)

3. Automation (computerization, robots, technology, processes)

Objective: Creativity gives you the competitive edge.

Part 2: Essential senses:

1. Design - Moving beyond function to engage the sense, asset above function

2. Story - Narrative added to products and services - not just argument. Best of the six senses.

3. Symphony - Adding invention and big picture thinking (not just detail focus).

4. Empathy - Going beyond logic and engaging emotion and intuition.

5. Play - Bringing humor and light-heartedness to business and products.

6. Meaning - the purpose is the journey, give meaning to life from inside yourself.


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