52LTD Blog

By Shelly Strom and Daniel Pink

We already know cities such as Seattle and Portland boast a treasure trove of creatives. We’re still learning, however, about the ways in which creatives are, and will continue to be, economic drivers.

Daniel H. Pink, who served from 1995 to 1997 as chief speechwriter for Vice President Al Gore, sheds light on this subject in his best-selling book “A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future.”

“A Whole New Mind” synthesizes big picture trends to explain how a new epoch of our post-industrial society is rising and how right-brain types are the sort of entrepreneurs and workers who will succeed.

Pink suggests that we are evolving away from the Information Age, during which the left-brain dominant knowledge worker reined supreme and are moving into the Conceptual Age, a stage where creatives and other types of right-brain people take center stage.

The main characters in the Conceptual Age, Pink says, “are the creator and the empathizer, whose distinctive ability is mastery of R-Directed [right-brain] Thinking.”

We at 52 Ltd. enthusiastically recommend “A Whole New Mind,” which is a quick, uplifting read.

It brings clarity at a time during which the global situation seems increasingly complicated.

It tells us that we in the creative community are doing is the right thing-cultivation of creative types over the long-term will make us economically healthier.

Pink points to downward pressures on U.S. jobs, forces that he labels Abundance, Asia, and Automation.

Abundance, he says, has satisfied the material desires of many in the developed world. In turn, significance of beauty and emotion are heightened, as is desire for meaning.

Asia, Pink says, is fulfilling demand for white-collar left-brain knowledge workers, not to mention reduced labor costs. The dynamic is forcing knowledge workers in advanced parts of the world to “master abilities that can’t be shipped overseas,” he says.

Automation is impacting today’s desk workers the way it did for yesterday’s factory workers, thereby forcing workers to bring value in ways that computers never can, he says.

These forces, Pink said in an email to me, are likely to intensify during the current downturn.

“When consumers are strapped for cash and credit, they’re unlikely to open their wallets for modest, incremental advances in goods and services. They’ll do that only for huge, bold, conceptual leaps. As a result, for both individuals and organizations, right-brain thinking might be even more important, not less important, in a downturn,” Pink wrote via email.

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