meaningful innovation

Top 50 Business Thinkers of 2011

The Top 50 Business Thinkers is the definitive global ranking of management thinkers published every two years: last edition was 2011 and next will be in 2013.

Why am I talking about this topic?

Because while reading the list, I was amazed to find out that 3 out of the 50 best thinkers are also among my favorite authors!

I believe these are invaluable readings for two main reasons: 1) their findings, the results of their studies and 2) the mind set of the authors who are shifting paradigmes in the business world and in our culture.

You can check these two links in my blog, to find these books and eventually about other very valuable readings: My Best Readings In English and My Best Readings In Italian.

Would you like to share your favorite business authors and titles?

I was thinking about two key words: "to invest” and “to innovate” so I decided to check in the dictionary.

I took the Oxford Advanced Dictionary (7th Edition) and found the meaning of “to invest”:

To buy properties, shares in a company in the hope of making a profit. To spend time, energy, effort on something that you think is good or useful.

I verified the same word (verb) on Thesaurus and this is what I found:

Expend money with the expectation of achieving a profit or material result by putting it into financial schemes, shares, or property, or by using it to develop a commercial venture.

This is what Thesaurus says about “Investment”:

Act of devoting time, effort, or energy to a particular undertaking with the expectation of a worthwhile result.

I finally checked the meaning of “To innovate" in the Oxford Advanced Dictionary (7th Edition) to find this:

To introduce new things, ideas or ways of doing something.

This is what Thesaurus says about “To innovate":

Make changes in something established, esp. by introducing new methods, ideas, or products.

It seems that “investing” and “investment” are both activities that generate an expected worthwhile result, that create something useful, that develop something possibly good. While “innovation” is the ability of the investor to profitably use elements that are available in his/her daily life to redesign, to reimagine and to improve the reality.

My final thought is that the true essense of “innovation” is made primarily by the act of reimagining, rethinking our simple daily reality in a much more meaningful way. The use and the deployment of technology (software, connections, hardware, ...) should remain be the secondary element which serves and supports the act of thinking and reimagining a new meaningful way of life.

If this is so, I wonder why so many companies are buying technology just to continue to do business, to produce things, to provide services in the same old way?

What would be your answer?

Writing about innovation, business strategies, technology, science and future trends in marketing and communication is something I cannot keep separated from my personal interests and passions. These “things” are not disconnected from my professional life: together with competencies and skills, they represent the foundation, what’s needed to nourish it, to make it thicker, more dense and more genuinely authentic.
Talking about Innvoation strategies or any professional topic without unveiling something personal would make this blog a mere business presentation or just another message among millions out there.

Thankfully we are all different. What we are cultivating in our hearts in terms of ideals, dreams, sacrifices, goals, expectations, etc., is what makes us unique, it enriches us bringing direct benefits to the people with whom we are interacting in our professional and personal life.
I usually go to buy fruits and vegetables directly from the farmer and while talking about my job with the owner of the farm (an eighty years old man) he told me: “University degrees are important, but what it is far more important is that behind the titles there is a good person, a person you can trust, a sincere and honest person that is passionate about what he or she does.” He’s a great old man!

Why am I telling all this?
Because I’d like to share with you two causes that need urgent and active support. One is AnimalAsia which aims to stop bear farming in China. The other is Savethedogs which fights against the massacre of stray dogs in Romania.

Why am I asking this?
Because I believe that caring for animals has the power to improve us as human beings. The compassion that leads us to act and to defend their rights becomes a great example of civilization for the whole community.
Because Innovation that grows in our heart brings us further. Even in the business.

If you read through these quotes that I found in different books, posts, articles and speaches, I suppose you will easily guess what I mean by “passions that will propel a new age of prosperity”.

• In the book “Crush it!”, by Gary Vaynerchuk you read: “Love your family, work super hard, live your passion.” The book is entirely developed around the idea: “Do what makes you happy, keep it simple, work hard, look ahead.”
• In the book “Enchantment”, by Guy Kawasaki one fundamental concept emerges: “New business are created from people trying to make the world a better place with new ideas which they fulfill by pursuing and developing their passions.”
• In the book “The art of the start”, by Guy Kawasaky you find this quote from Ludwig van Beethoven: “I never thought of composing music for the fame and the glory. What’s inside my heart must come out; this is why I am composing music.”
• Steve Jobs during his famous commencement speach at Stanford said: “[...] Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. [...] And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. [...] Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.”
• In the article “The best investment you can make”, by Umair Haque published on the blog of the Harward Business Review you read: “The best investment you can make isn’t gold. It’s the people you love, the dreams you have and living a life that matters. [...] the safest investments of all are the human, the social and the emotional ones.”
• In the book “The new capitalist manifesto”, by Umair Haque acknowledges “[...] my insight matters less than your vision, ambition and passion.”

The list could go on, but I am sure the underlying concept is becoming clear: if we want to make the world a better place, things have to change first in our hearts. The place where our dreams, ideals, intuitions, inner voices, ideas and ultimately where our most authentic passions are living.

This is not just a naive vision of our society, but rather a very different way of feeling and living that brings those who deeply share it, to feel like misfits. In fact when we come to realize that “the heedless pursuit of more is unsustainable and, ultimately, unfulfilling” how would it be possible not to feel a misfit in a world that does not understand the “difference between maximizing consumption and maximizing quality of life”?

The starting spark must come from each and everyone of us, from our will to build a sustainable future where “prosperity is not what one has, but what one is capable of”. Within this renewed context we’ll be able to develop the art of living our life paths “meaningfully well” as opposed to “pursuing opulence”.

When I read this article ("What kind of misfit are you?") by Umair Haque a couple of month ago, I immediately identified myself with the subject as it happens each time I read his posts on the HBR web site or on his blog www.umarihaque.com.

I like very much his post: I find in it a message of hope to those like me, who are fighting every day against that "just a little bit of dissatisfaction with the way things are" in their life, in their working or professional environment. It is so frustrating to fight against the status-quo that it's nearly impossible not to feel a misfit and I know quite a few people feeling the same way.

What I find very encouraging is that "great accomplishment usually takes the impertinence not to fit into the suffocating status quo" which does not necessarily means that "every misfit accomplishes something fundamentally unexpectedly awesome!" On the other hand "it's also probable that most things unexpected, radical and breathtakingly awesome take just a little bit of nonconformity".

Happy and lucky misfits! Like the free thinkers, the great celebrities we see (and listen!) in the video.

We can call them the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the crazy ones but they have been geniuses who saw things differently: of course we can disagree with them, we can quote them, we can glorify them, but the only thing we can't do is to ignore them. Because they changed things for the better.

We really need those free thinkers today more than ever before in our history to find the way out from the "world perma-crisis" which seems to be the current status quo, because "the so called leaders are paralyzed and hopelessly confused".

As Umair says "I'd bet there's a misfit just itching to be released inside each and every one of us".
So don't be frustrated if you think you are a misfit, but be happy and feel lucky!.