Ahhhh.
So many ideas and so little time.
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In Peter Drucker's Age of Discontinuity, he suggests that corporations and governments have a natural tendency to cling onto past successes and not realize when these past successes are no longer useful. He likens it to a human -- i.e. he says it's a "natural human tendency"
Then there are experts who call for what Drucker would term "planned abandonment", where a policy or a set of policies are put in place to identify investments and projects that are past their prime and phase them out. Add to these policies even more policies to help identify cases of discontinuous change that would therefore call for disruptive technologies... some feel that governments ought not to invest in sure-wins that have a low rate of return, but high-risk areas with potentially huge rates of return.
Some of us call governments inhumane, distant, a grey cold block of concrete that acts independent of what the society really wants. But ironically, if Drucker's description has any truth in it, the institutions that govern us are in fact scaled up replicas of us! Don't we all cling to our past successes and stick to what we thought we were good at? So many of us fear change and justify our current pursuits as "oh this is what I am truly interested in" when in reality it is more like "oh this is what I think I am good at" or worse still, "this is what people have told me I am good at".
If we call for governments or those cold-hearted-institutions to incorporate "planned abandonment" into national policies, rid the old and embrace the new, wouldn't it not be ironic for us to cover up our own insecurities using the same excuses? That we need to justify our actions because our parents or whoever-else-pays-our-tuition has invested so much in us, that we need to account to those who trust their resources in us, that "if all along I have done well in this, so why should I change?".
Something to think about? If the US academics lament the inability of the US government to pour funding into high risk (and potentially high returns) investments, then perhaps the Innovation-Agency-of-Sang-Nila-Utama's (IASNU) island is actually doing the right thing? Pour money into things that may not end up anywhere, but... there's that little possibility of huge success. Even more justification -- the little island doesn't have much to fall back on, the only way to survive is to make big investments in many high risk areas and hope that one makes it?
More irony. Those who lament IASNU's so-called indiscriminate funding of high-risk and perhaps short term bubbles go abroad and question why countries like the US attempt to fund these same "bubbles". Well someone has to do it after all right? And if the argument is that small countries with limited resources should "spend them more wisely", shouldn't the big developed countries therefore provide the funding? And vice versa of course, if you disagree with me.
----------------------
On another note. The Honda Element is, to me, an ugly car. But ahh.... the beauty of the design process and market segmentation strategy behind it. Functionality and Persona selleth a car, I say. Put a seating design specialist behind an automobile design project and he turns a car into a transformer toy. And its essentially the same power train and engine etc etc as the Honda CRVs out there (which surprisingly was designed for young women) except for the front water tank which was flattened out because the front of the Element is so flat. Turns out that the Element was designed for young men looking to buy their first car. And true enough, they made up 45% of the buyers.
---------------------
If you have the time, take a look at the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). This think tank was set up in 1997 as an NPO with the objective of promoting American global leadership. Noble you think? Think again. The US assumes that it is the world leader, and that their position (and thus their assistance) is what the rest of the world desires. You sit in a class in an American university and you hear Americans criticize the historical British imperialism and slavery... you hear them argue against child labor in Africa... and you start to think, what do they think of their own country? Imperialist? Expansionist?
PNAC discusses the potential benefits of developing a microbe that targets a specific genome of an individual. In other words, the development of a weapon that can only kill one target. So then perhaps they can pour some of it into Saddam Hussein's milk (if he drinks milk) or Diet Coke and then poof, destroyed. How would you like that? Hah. Kinda easy for any politician with a quick mind and a capable tongue to paint such a Weapon-Of-Minute-Destruction as a Free-Us-From-Terrorism-Drug, don't you think?
So many ideas and so little time.
---------------------------
In Peter Drucker's Age of Discontinuity, he suggests that corporations and governments have a natural tendency to cling onto past successes and not realize when these past successes are no longer useful. He likens it to a human -- i.e. he says it's a "natural human tendency"
Then there are experts who call for what Drucker would term "planned abandonment", where a policy or a set of policies are put in place to identify investments and projects that are past their prime and phase them out. Add to these policies even more policies to help identify cases of discontinuous change that would therefore call for disruptive technologies... some feel that governments ought not to invest in sure-wins that have a low rate of return, but high-risk areas with potentially huge rates of return.
Some of us call governments inhumane, distant, a grey cold block of concrete that acts independent of what the society really wants. But ironically, if Drucker's description has any truth in it, the institutions that govern us are in fact scaled up replicas of us! Don't we all cling to our past successes and stick to what we thought we were good at? So many of us fear change and justify our current pursuits as "oh this is what I am truly interested in" when in reality it is more like "oh this is what I think I am good at" or worse still, "this is what people have told me I am good at".
If we call for governments or those cold-hearted-institutions to incorporate "planned abandonment" into national policies, rid the old and embrace the new, wouldn't it not be ironic for us to cover up our own insecurities using the same excuses? That we need to justify our actions because our parents or whoever-else-pays-our-tuition has invested so much in us, that we need to account to those who trust their resources in us, that "if all along I have done well in this, so why should I change?".
Something to think about? If the US academics lament the inability of the US government to pour funding into high risk (and potentially high returns) investments, then perhaps the Innovation-Agency-of-Sang-Nila-Utama's (IASNU) island is actually doing the right thing? Pour money into things that may not end up anywhere, but... there's that little possibility of huge success. Even more justification -- the little island doesn't have much to fall back on, the only way to survive is to make big investments in many high risk areas and hope that one makes it?
More irony. Those who lament IASNU's so-called indiscriminate funding of high-risk and perhaps short term bubbles go abroad and question why countries like the US attempt to fund these same "bubbles". Well someone has to do it after all right? And if the argument is that small countries with limited resources should "spend them more wisely", shouldn't the big developed countries therefore provide the funding? And vice versa of course, if you disagree with me.
----------------------
On another note. The Honda Element is, to me, an ugly car. But ahh.... the beauty of the design process and market segmentation strategy behind it. Functionality and Persona selleth a car, I say. Put a seating design specialist behind an automobile design project and he turns a car into a transformer toy. And its essentially the same power train and engine etc etc as the Honda CRVs out there (which surprisingly was designed for young women) except for the front water tank which was flattened out because the front of the Element is so flat. Turns out that the Element was designed for young men looking to buy their first car. And true enough, they made up 45% of the buyers.
---------------------
If you have the time, take a look at the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). This think tank was set up in 1997 as an NPO with the objective of promoting American global leadership. Noble you think? Think again. The US assumes that it is the world leader, and that their position (and thus their assistance) is what the rest of the world desires. You sit in a class in an American university and you hear Americans criticize the historical British imperialism and slavery... you hear them argue against child labor in Africa... and you start to think, what do they think of their own country? Imperialist? Expansionist?
PNAC discusses the potential benefits of developing a microbe that targets a specific genome of an individual. In other words, the development of a weapon that can only kill one target. So then perhaps they can pour some of it into Saddam Hussein's milk (if he drinks milk) or Diet Coke and then poof, destroyed. How would you like that? Hah. Kinda easy for any politician with a quick mind and a capable tongue to paint such a Weapon-Of-Minute-Destruction as a Free-Us-From-Terrorism-Drug, don't you think?
1 Comments:
But ironically, if Drucker's description has any truth in it, the institutions that govern us are in fact scaled up replicas of us! Don't we all cling to our past successes and stick to what we thought we were good at? So many of us fear change
I can relate to that as a pastor and as a person. Thought-provoking post!
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