Monday, May 16, 2005

MBA - Left & Right brain economy

Dan Pink as well as being a contributing writer for Wired magazine, was also in da big house (The White House) as the chief speech writer to Vice President Al Gore.

His
book "A Whole New Mind" attempts to move the whole upside-down thinking (Charles Handy - "Age of Unreason") and emergent thinking (Steve Johnson - "Emergence") theories forward... In it he talks about how Western economies have been built on the left-sided brain rationale of analytics, sequence, logic and reduction -- "aka The Knowledge Worker".

He says, that this mindset is so deeply rooted, that even though industries have disappeared or are disappearing rapidly by taking advantage of globalisation and outsourcing - no serious thought has been given to how our institutions -- schools, colleges and universities should deal with the situation.

Should Western corporations continue to accept churned-out MBA grads that are not properly prepared with the additional supporting ride-side brain conceptual skills that are more and more likely to be required?

As Marc Cecere of Forrester Research says, "As corporations bred a generation of leaders focused on reducing costs, outsourcing and calculating investment metrics. Somehow we now expect them to move move from the cost-cutting mind-set to more innovative and strategic work."