It’s common knowledge that the driving force in our economy is knowledge and information. However, notes Naspers’ internet head Antonie Roux in a recent Maverick article, it is creative companies that are now succeeding.
“Fortune did an analysis over the last 10 or 20 years of the successes and failures in Silicon Valley. In the very last paragraph they said what was interesting was that most of the companies that had failed had been run by accountants and most that were successful had engineers as CEOs,” says Roux.
This observation fits well with Wall Street Journal writer Dan Pink’s book “A Whole News Mind“. Although Pink takes it a step further…
As he writes:
Lawyers. Accountants. Computer programmers. That’s what our parents encouraged us to become when we grew up. But Mom and Dad were wrong. The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind. The era of “left brain” dominance, and the Information Age that it engendered, are giving way to a new world in which “right brain” qualities-inventiveness, empathy, meaning-predominate.
How do you pursue inventiveness, empathy and meaning in your business?