A Whole New Mind

Daniel H. Pink argues that the structure of the brain offers a metaphor for the contours of the age. We are moving, he says, from a world that prizes metaphorically left-brain skills, the logical, linear, spreadsheet kind, to one that prizes right-brain skills such as artistry, empathy and big-picture thinking. Three forces drive the shift, which he labels Abundance, Automation and Asia. Significantly higher living standards put a premium on creating new categories of products and services and on giving existing offerings greater beauty and meaning; software has become adept at certain routine intellectual work, doing it faster and more cheaply than people; and offshoring has driven down the price of that reductive work. The consequence, on Pink's account, is that the most important abilities are no longer high tech but high concept and high touch, because those are hard to automate and hard to outsource. He names six aptitudes. The high concept three are Design, combining utility and significance, Story, putting facts in context and delivering them with emotional impact, and Symphony, combining disparate pieces into a whole greater than the sum of its parts. The high touch three are Empathy, Play and Meaning, and the book offers exercises for sharpening each.

Written from the official book page on Daniel Pink's website.

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