The Synthesizing Mind

Harvard professor and also best known for the theory of multiple intelligences, Edward Gardner introduced the capability of five minds for the future from the book “Five Minds for the Future.”

Author introduced disciplined mind, synthesizing mind, creating mind, respectful mind and ethical mind as five minds which would lead the people to the successful career in the future. He suggested that future leaders should posses the capability of multiperspectivalism, interdisciplinary intelligence and synthesizing to be a role model who can fulfill the mind of the synthesizing, considering the fact that we all increasingly live in the age of talented peoples’ “laser intelligence” rather than the “searchlight intelligence.”

Today I found similar argument from Robert Shiller who wrote the book “Animal Spirit” and renowned behavioral economist in Yale university from the column of Korea Chosun Daily Newspaper. He claimed that we all live in the era of “popular economies”, and at the same time paradoxically “losing faith in economists”. According to the author, this golden age of economics stemmed, paradoxically, from the lost of general public’s credibility on economists. He articulated that if economics are merely relied on computer simulation model and could not afford to taking advantage of human intelligence then, in turn, economists would expected to lost the credibility from public and could not be able to predict the future. Sometimes economist are expected to turn off the navigation system and must learn to think for themselves.

Harvard business review (Jeffrey Dyer, Hal Gregersen and Clayton Christensen, Dec. 2009) also introduced five discovery skills which made one person more creative than others. Authors suggested that our ability to think creatively comes one-third from genetics; but two-thirds of the innovation skill set comes through learning – first understanding a given skill, then practicing it, experimenting, and ultimately gaining confidence in one’s capacity to create. Associating skill was one of them. Associating, or the ability to successfully connect seemingly unrelated questions, problems, or ideas from different fields, is central to the innovator’s DNA.

I could find similar notion from recent article from HBR blog (HBR Blog, The next big thing in managing innovation by Henry Chesbrough). Father of open innovation Chesbrough asked the question – what about the decade just ended? He expressed that one plausible suggestion was that past decade has been the decade of open innovation.

Then where might management innovation go from here? He offered three short predictions: First, management innovation will become more collaborative. Second, business model innovation would become as important as technological innovation. Third, we would need to master the art and science of innovating in services-led economies. To me, first prediction personally caught my eye – more collaboration. Author predicted that it will evolve into a more iterative, interactive process across the boundaries of companies, as communities of interested participants work together to create new innovations. It sound likes, to me at least, it is necessary to have a mind of synthesizing for more effective collaborations.

The book written by Amy Chua who is professor at Yale Law School and author of “Day of Empire” is ranked as 6th at the Amazon best seller as of today. Title of the book “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” imparts the secret behind the stereotypical Asian child's phenomenal success: the Chinese mother. Chua promotes what has traditionally worked very well in raising children: strict, old world, uncompromising values. What they are, however, are different from what she sees as indulgent and permissive Western parents: stressing academic performance above all, never accepting a mediocre grade, insisting on drilling and practice, and instilling respect for authority etc.
Well, Chua's efforts "not to raise a soft, entitled child" seems to strike American readers as a little scary.

So now, we have two different but somewhat contradictory view point here – synthesizing mind vs harsh discipline.

What the new world is calling for
Howard Gardner shared his experience of moment when he met the Chinese psychologist about 20 years ago in China. He noticed that every student in the class took turns to memorize the seven rules of human memory of which Howard thought as time consuming. He and Chinese professor discussed about the pros and cons of its teaching method. Chinese professor concluded by saying: “We’ve been doing quite a long time, so we know this way of doing is right.”

Howard explained the evolution of education from ancient times such as 700 years ago. Educated elites were perceived as people who had the series of capabilities such as calligraphy, archery, music, riding etc. Even bright students were simply asked to repeat the intelligent ancestor’s wisdom – Confucius and Mencius in Orient and Aristotle and Aquinas in Western - and sometimes asked to memorize the core phrases rather than understand and apply.

He insisted that goal of educational effort is to learn the proper scholarly knowledge, thinking habit and behavior pattern. In spite of the good motivation and the utmost efforts, why so many students stick to the wrong or improper way of thinking? Author stated that perhaps the main reason would be stemmed from lack of understanding a difference between “subject matter” and ‘discipline’.
Likewise what the teachers have been doing, most of the students in the class or training camp thought their mission was to learn the subject matter. They store lots of facts, formula and numbers into their memories.

Where as, ‘discipline’ is basically different phenomenon from “subject matter”. Discipline means the chain of particular way of thinking towards the world. It strives us to analyze the relevance between two information or questions, and often tons of information. Specific way of thinking makes the distinct feature of profession and skilled professionals could be a good example under certain satisfactory circumstances.

Back to Chua’s book, this Chinese education method story lead me to infer that cultural heritage and education system is closely interwined each other.

I have been noticed two different reactions from Korea leading electronic companies when they faced the challenges stemmed from iPhone launch in Korea during 2010. One company could swiftly confront the challenges and moved in relatively nice order. While, the other company seemed not to identify the implications of these changes, so consequently, could not connect the dots. I happened to hear the complaints and appeals from the trench during my visit in this company – “why should I care the business model ? All we need to do is selecting the right platform and crafting best smartphone in the world”. But it did not take a long time- only six month. One company sold 10 million smartphone worldwide while the other company recorded the 185M$ deficit in 3Q 2010.