The book "A whole new mind: moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age" (written by Daniel Pink, Riverhead/Penguin, 2005) observes that the last decade belonged to a certain kind of person with a certain kind of mind -computer programmers who could crank code, lawyers who could craft contracts and MBAs who could crunch numbers. According to this book, the future belongs to a different kind of mind, which the author labels as the "conceptual age".
There would be six distinctive abilities that the Information Age overlooked and undervalued:
1. Design (power of creation)
2. Story (deliver argument with emotion via the narrative)
3. Symphony (combining the pieces into an arresting new whole)
4. Empathy (forge relationships, above en beyond the pure information)
5. Play (professional benefits of laughter, humor, etc.)
6. Meaning (living in a world of material plenty, search for purpose and transcendance)
For sure, these values will increasingly receive their place in mangement education, if we would like to succeed in the coming decade.
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