W E D N E S D A Y , J U L Y 2 7 , 2 0 0 5
ALGORITHMIZED vs IMAGINATION-DRIVEN PROCESSES
Opportunities for the Metro-Atlanta Engineering & Geospatial Community
S y n o p s i s
Algorithmization of processes in business and government drove the 20th century economies and social prosperity. Value creation in the last century was largely defined by the conversion of heuristics to algorithms - so they could be driven to huge scale and scope.
Today, competing is no longer about creating dominance in scale-intensive industries, it is about producing elegant, emotionally attractive products and services in the imagination-intensive society.
Logical and precise thinking gave us the Information Age. Now comes the Conceptual Age ruled by artistry, empathy, and emotion.
To flourish in this age, we'll need to supplement our well developed high tech abilities with aptitudes for emotional beauty, capacity to empathize, to understand the subtleties of human interaction, ... regardless of the institutional makeup, whether as individuals, for-profits, or government organizations.
Q u e s t i o n s t o t h e P a n e l :
1. How would you define, from your own, your industry, or your institution experience, the outer limits of creativity space you are operating within? For example, using Mac Donald business model, or Six Sigma processes as most algorithmized end of the spectrum (the most left brain type), and at the other extreme the Goggle business model and their corporate mission statement as the most cool and imagination intensive business model.
(Google's search utility is the world's best known brand almost entirely through word of mouth from satisfied users; it is the largest providers of maps and satellite imagery (Google Earth); using Google you can check stock quotes, news headlines, lookup phonebook listings, search more than one billion images and peruse the world's largest archive of Usenet messages; all in many different languages - and ALL ENTIRELY FOR FREE, WORLDWIDE - with Google being one the most profitable company!)
2. How the "creative domain" defined in an answers to the previous question relates to "geographic domain", especially in today's expanding global economy. With most of algorithmized jobs being outsourced to other countries (and according to experts this is only just the very beginning) what is the future of our local regional economies?
3. What type of artistic and emotional beauty design skills we should expect from our engineers, GIS analyst, software developers, ... in addition to their technical expertise, to provide cool products and services, specifically for making the Metro Atlanta economy and communities to flourish?
MORE ON EMPATHY ECONOMY
THE EMPATHY ECONOMY"Design thinking" can create rewarding experiences for consumers --
the key to earnings growth and an edge that outsourcing can't beat
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/mar2005/nf2005037_4086.htm
Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, is reshaping his entire MBA program around the principle that "businesspeople will have to become more 'masters of heuristics' than 'managers of algorithms,'" that "design skills and business skills are converging," as he said in the Winter, 2004, edition of the school's alumni publication. It's time to embrace a new value proposition based on creating -- indeed, often co-creating -- new products and services with customers that fill their needs, make them happy, and make companies and shareholders rich.
http://www.rotman.utoronto.ca/index.html
HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW
Breakthrough Ideas for 2005: Roger Martin, Validity vs. Reliability (February 2005) http://www.rotman.utoronto.ca/rogermartin/Breakthroughideas.pdf
DANIEL PINK, A WHOLE NEW MIND
Doctors. Lawyers. Engineers. That's what our parents told us to be when we grew up. But were Mom and Dad right? Actually, the future belongs to a different kind of person with a different kind of mind, people like artists, inventors, storytellers, caregivers. These right-brained people are the next business elite – the women and men who will power your organization.
http://www.washingtonspeakers.com/speakers/speaker.cfm?SpeakerId=2970
EMPATHY AND ANALOGY, Allison Barnes and Paul Thagard
Philosophy Department, University of Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 3G1
http://cogsci.uwaterloo.ca/Articles/Pages/Empathy.html#anchor01