I recently finished reading a book: A Whole New Mind by Daniel H. Pink. The book tries to answer the question below:
Why right brainers will rule the future?
He took us back to a day and age when industrial revolution started a transition from hand production methods to machines. And then later on, we had the digital revolution, which marked the onset of information age.
So what’s next after the information age?
He coined the term Conceptual Age. You may ask yourself what is the big fuss with conceptual economy. Well, it’s not. It’s the inevitable transition of our digital economy to an economy that demands a new set of skills.
What kind of skills? Right-brained skills such as creative thinking, innovation, intuition, empathy and design will play a major part in the conceptual economy.
In other words, the new economy will rely less and less on left-brained skills such as logic and mathematics (which were relied heavily in the information economy).
The writer predicts the transition out of the information economy from the 3 A’s:
- Abundance
- Asia
- Automation
In the world of Abundance, it is no longer enough to create a product that is cheap and functional. It needs to be beautiful and conjures emotion in you and I. A good example, if lightbulbs are cheap, why would anyone need candles anymore? Candles are still an over billion-a-year business for reason that transcends the need for luminosity. People simply desire beauty and meaning.
Jobs have been outsourced to Asia. With the advancement in software technology and cheap telephone calls, the same call centre job can be carried out by anyone in Asia such as The Philippines where wages are much lower than in a developed country.
As patients are able to self-diagnose and tap on the benefit of Automation, these technology advancements are changing the emphasis of many medical practices—away from routine, analytical, and information-based work and toward empathy, narrative medicine, and holistic care.