A Whole New Mind:

Why Right-brainers will Rule the Future

Pink, D.H. (2006).  A whole new mind: Why right-brainers will rule the future.  New York: Riverhead.

In Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind, we see another interpretation of knowledge work and the future of work in American and global economies.  Pink’s definition of “knowledge worker” is narrower than Thomas Davenport’s in Managing Knowledge Workers.  In fact, Pink makes the case that “knowledge work” is becoming obsolete: the Information Age of the 20th century rules by knowledge workers is being replaced in the 21st century by the Conceptual Age of “creators and empathizers.”  In other words, Pink contends that left-brain analytical thinking is becoming obsolete; right-brain thinking is the future.

To survive in this new Conceptual Age, individuals and organizations must examine what they’re doing to earn a living and ask themselves three questions:

1. Can someone overseas do it cheaper?
2. Can a computer do it faster?
3. Is what I’m offering in demand in an age of abundance?

The impetus for movement into the Conceptual Age is threefold: Abundance, Asia, and Automation.  First, abundance has ironically caused left-brain-directed thinking to lessened in its significance.  The prosperity left-brain analytics has unleashed, Pink contends, has placed a premium on less rational, more right-brain-directed sensibilities such as beauty, spirituality, and emotion.  For businesses, it’s no longer enough to create a product that’s reasonable priced and adequately, functional.  It must also be beautiful, unique, and meaningful.  Further, much work that was once held in high esteem in America now can be automated and done by a computer or outsourced to Asia to be completed by lower-priced labor.  “High tech is no longer enough,” Pink contends.  Any job that depends on routines – that can be reduced to a set of rules or broken down into a set of repeatable steps – is at risk.

So how does Pink suggest a person become more right-brained and keep his or her job in the future?  Six senses are outlined as essential right-brain capabilities: design, story, symphony, empathy, play, and meaning.  Each sense is given its own chapter, in which the business case is made for the sense along with research evidence and recommendations for developing the sense.

Regardless of whether you buy into Pink’s assessment of the future of the economy in the U.S., the reader will benefit from the variety of exercises and resources packed into this book.  Every chapter follows with a short “portfolio” section that includes a collection of resources from drawing exercises to links to emotional intelligence questionnaires on the Web to tests to assess your ability to detect lies.  Left-brain-directed thinking may never leave the American economic landscape, but creativity and a competency in conceptual thinking may set one above the rest.

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