Acceptance (capitulation?) before Creation
This weekend I was reading an interview in the Atlantic magazine with a Chinese money manager – Gao Xiging - who controls about $200 Billion of China’s wealth; wealth that is basically keeping our nation from collapsing and that was obtained from American’s out of control consumption.
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200812/fallows-chinese-banker
The interviewer was James Fallows, a fantastic journalist with immense international experience, specifically in Asia. The Chinese gentleman was educated in the USA as a lawyer and graduated from Duke University and had worked in the USA before moving back to China to take on this role.
His vision therefore is a broad vision composed of US-based and Chinese perspectives. The interview was about the financial crisis that in large part was precipitated by us and our “pragmatic” American attitudes; a pragmatism that in my view is hurting us.
What really caught my attention, however, was his statement about what our new President needs to tell the American people. Here it goes:
“This is wartime; this is about the survival of our Nation. It is not about our supremacy in the world. Let’s not talk about that anymore. Let’s get down to the very basics of our livelihood”
This statement is not so different than when a company- faced with survival caused by disruptive technologies – needs to do in order to rise again. Accepting the truth is the first must- have. The second is capitulation.
The important innovation lesson here is that minds must accept and internalize the disruption before they can deal with new creations. Or, as a great Zen expression states:
A closed mind rejects what they see.
A wise mind rejects what they think.
Good advise indeed.
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200812/fallows-chinese-banker
The interviewer was James Fallows, a fantastic journalist with immense international experience, specifically in Asia. The Chinese gentleman was educated in the USA as a lawyer and graduated from Duke University and had worked in the USA before moving back to China to take on this role.
His vision therefore is a broad vision composed of US-based and Chinese perspectives. The interview was about the financial crisis that in large part was precipitated by us and our “pragmatic” American attitudes; a pragmatism that in my view is hurting us.
What really caught my attention, however, was his statement about what our new President needs to tell the American people. Here it goes:
“This is wartime; this is about the survival of our Nation. It is not about our supremacy in the world. Let’s not talk about that anymore. Let’s get down to the very basics of our livelihood”
This statement is not so different than when a company- faced with survival caused by disruptive technologies – needs to do in order to rise again. Accepting the truth is the first must- have. The second is capitulation.
The important innovation lesson here is that minds must accept and internalize the disruption before they can deal with new creations. Or, as a great Zen expression states:
A closed mind rejects what they see.
A wise mind rejects what they think.
Good advise indeed.
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