Yesterday i gave a presentation for a group of wise people. After talking about innovation, leadership, change, media, and more of that kind of stuff, i got a great remark: ‘i miss the term serendipity in your story.’ He start talking about penicillin, X rays, and Columbus.
I had to think for a long time, and it was hard for me to come up with a new media, technology, telecom or it invention. I think they are there, but i couldn’t come up with one. I think all ‘our’ innovations are based on the fact that we have an image of the future, like you have in the carpe diem synergy theory.
But his remark stays in my mind, so he must be right, but i have (yet) now idea how. This will be continued.
Archive for the ‘leadership’ Category
Serendipity
Wednesday, May 27th, 2009Ted.com evening
Saturday, May 23rd, 2009Last week, i had a Ted night. The whole evening i watched Ted video’s. Two video’s inspired me the most.
The first impressive video was from ‘psychologist Barry Schwartz takes aim at a central tenet of western societies: freedom of choice. In Schwartz’s estimation, choice has made us not freer but more paralyzed, not happier but more dissatisfied.’
Ted advised me to watch Dan Gilbert after Schwartz. He ‘challenges the idea that we’ll be miserable if we don’t get what we want. Our “psychological immune system” lets us feel truly happy even when things don’t go as planned.’ Funny part are the 4 reasons to be happy:
1. Accrue wealth, power, and prestige. Then lose it.
2. Spend as much of your life in prison as you possibly can.
3. Make someone else really, really rich.
4. Never ever join the Beatles.
Carpe diem synergy theorie
Tuesday, March 17th, 2009Sometimes you have to come up with a theory. I thought about reaching goals, being the master of you own destiny and wondering why some people think that you get success by setting a goal and doing the things to achieve that goal. This one-dimensional, lineair approach needed another view. I came up with the carpe diem synergy theory.
carpe diem synergy theory
It (still) starts with the end goal. In the past, think of the industrialization, the end goal was clear and SMART. You win or you lose. Nothing in between. Now the end goal depends on your perspective and it will be influenced on a daily basis by your thoughts, but it will also be influenced through political, personal, social or technological changes. You can see it as a cloud in the future that can have another shape but it is still a cloud.
Now the question: how do we come to this cloud? Time will help a lot. But when you do nothing you will end on a cloud you don’t like, so when you want to achieve you personal (or company, or society) cloud you have to follow the right stream. You can see the streams as roads. There are a lot of roads to the cloud. Roads as: highways, dirt roads, secondary roads, small roads, hairpin roads, etc. It is the art in life to choose the right road at the right time. Sometimes you need to be on the dirt road, you need to slow down, feel the mud to step over after a while you take the highway. You have to do that conscious, but you also have to be very adaptable, open for new roads. I fact you have to presense if you are on the right road, when you are on the right road you have to enjoy the effective ride.
Now the question: who is taking that road? There are many roads, you have to be very adaptable to new roads and the cloud is unclear also. For a stable progress the person, organization or society who is going to the cloud need to know very well who they are, what they are doing and why they are doing there ‘thing’. This core can change but like a personality of a human being; it is hard to change the essence of your being.