Saturday, February 27, 2010

A Whole New Mind or Out of your Mind?


A nice grad student brought me a set of books on innovation. "This is a must read", she pointed to Dan Pink's "A Whole New Mind".

Pink's articles in Wired and other places were entertaining to me so I picked the book and started. A great read. But the book falls into the similar trap of most books by professional reporters and writers: they write the book mostly based news reporter's observations. The mind set of the news reporter is to create information product that people are welling to purchase, not science backed up by research. It made entertaining read but if anyone will shape their values or career strategy based on these types of books, they will be misled and very disappointed.

The book, like the famous "Flat World" book, if read by someone already have a strong and sound believe system and intellectual maturity, should provide invaluable pieces of information and insights that can be very beneficial. For someone who does not have a firm knowledge foundation, those books can be misleading and down right dangerous since the scattered pieces of news and a few author's "revelations" usually are not coherent and can not stand the test of time. And by the time, I don't even refer to generations or centuries, I mean just a few years. Pick a best seller 10 years ago and try to read it, most of them are whimsical and laughable now. Remember "Dow at 30000"?

Back to the "New Mind". I completely agree the holistic, long term, creative, emotional capability (the L-directed mind) is as important, if not more so, than the analytical, logical, test taking capability (R-directed). The author's pitfall is to declare this is a new phenomenon starting 2000 A.D. while it is the case through out the human history. The best among us have both, even some don't show one side as much as the other. Use both sides of your brain!! That is the old, the new and the only mind. No recognize that is, well, out of your mind!!

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