A Whole New Mind

I just finished reading A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink, a book about the emergence of the creative economy. In it, Mr. Pink describes the reasons that more and more work in the USA will be creative in nature due to "Abundance, Asia and Automation" and covers key skill areas of creative work.

Mr. Pink asserts that abundance drives us towards higher creativity because our basic needs are met and we crave a higher level on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Asia drives it by undercutting the market for non-creative labor in the West and driving down wages. Lastly, automation has a similar effect on tasks that can be routinized. He doesn't just limit this migration to manufacturing, but extends it to what we consider knowledge work today (e.g. lawyers, accountants, engineers).

Abundance is quite prevalent in our society, but this is not a new phenomenon. Although there are pockets of extreme poverty, the past three generations in the USA have experienced a period of abundance never before seen in the world. Most of the effects of this seem to be experienced in the form of more consumption and a move towards superior goods (e.g. pâté instead of potatoes). The move up Maslow's heirarchy has already happened for the most part and, as a society, we haven't worried about mere survival in decades.

Asia certainly changes the game. However, I believe he is falling victim to linear thinking here. Wages in Asia are rising very quickly and in a few years, it might not make that much sense to put a call center there. We may be close to a high water mark in the offshoring of knowledge work jobs. At a minimum, the easy stuff has already moved and changes in the composition of labor might be slower from here on out. I agree with his point that offshoring introduces many new skill requirements for our workforce, and they do have a creative component, but many of the skills required are technical in nature (e.g. project management, systems engineering, etc.)

Automation definitely contributes to changes in the workforce. Secretaries are now resevered for the top echelons and they are probably more of a status symbol and gatekeeper than anthing else at this point. As computing and communications get cheaper and cheaper, there will continue to be changes where automation takes over from people. This also has its limits, but certainly contributes to changes in the work we do.

Overall, I agree with Mr. Pink's assessment that creative work is more important now than it used to be and current knowledge work jobs have a stronger creative component, but he might overstate the case a bit. To really be creative in some fields, you have to understand the "why" so you can ask the creative "why not" questions sensibly. For example, if you don't know how the internal combustion engine works, it is hard to ask a "why not" question to improve fuel economy for that technology - you just don't have enough background knowledge to be creative in that area. To get to that point might take years of training and work as an engineer doing routine reivsions and incremental design changes.

There are some other minor points in the opening discussion where I would have liked to see a bit fuller treatment (e.g. the effect of a creative economy on income distribution, the importance of cultural impacts on the growth of the creative economy, etc.) However, those are a bit besides the point.

In any event, the book gets much stronger after the initial section. After describing why he believes that R-brained (e.g. creative) work will replace L-brained (e.g. knowledge) work in our society, he goes on to list six areas that are key to being successful at creative work: Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play and Meaning. This is where the book really shines and he tells interesting tales about each of these facets and provides good examples and descriptions for each. He also includes a portfolio section at the end of each section to give some resources on how to work on each of those areas.

I'd read a review of this book a few years back and thought it sounded interesting, but my wife mentioned it a couple of weeks ago while relating a conversation she had with a local artist, which piqued my interest again. There are a few areas where I disagree with the opening chapters, but the sections describing the various areas of creative work are excellent. Overall, it is worth the time (247 pages) and certainly made me think about what I do and how I can get better at it.