A QUOTE TO PONDER:

“How much you discipline your mind to step out of it’s routines and look into new ways of doing things that you haven’t yet adopted is what will determine your economic potential.”

~ Paul Zane Pilzer, economist, social entrepreneur, best selling author (*), also known as the founder of a half dozen companies;

[Author's Note: (*) Of his almost a dozen of books, I have had only read his 'Unlimted Wealth' back in the early nineties, in which he offered a new theory called Economic Alchemy, based on abundance: that the earth contains unlimited resources because of human ingenuity continually defining new resources and/or learning how to better obtain and use our existing resources. The central equation of Economic Alchemy is W = P x Tⁿ : Wealth = Physical Resources times Technology, and T (Technology) has an exponential multiplier effect  on itself. The theory made a lot of sense to me.]

QUOTES TO PONDER

from economist and author of Unlimited Wealth, Paul Zane Pilzer:

1) "Prosperity belongs to those who learn new things fastest."

2) "Success in business depends largely on your adaptability skills - the ability with which you learn new things."

3) "How much you discipline your mind to step out of its routines and and look into new ways of doing things that you haven't yet adopted is what will determine your economic potential!"

CHANGE, ON YOUR TERMS, OR BE SHORT-CHANGED ON THE MARKET'S TERMS!

[continued from the Last Post.

My personal musings, inspired by Page 4 of 'The Brainaissance Program of iCAPitalism Seminars with... The World's Most Powerful Learning Systems for... The Learning Economy', by Dilip Mukerjea.]

The following pertinent question from Dilip Mukerjea can be quite scary.


I reckon, the only option for us today, as part of our longer term strategy to survive & thrive, is to keep on learning new things, & at the same time, keep on learning to apply technology-enablement to increase our personal productivity, so that we become more productive, efficient & irreplaceable.

I recall my early exposures as a working professional to what futurist Alvin Toffler has once described as "a turbulent environment filled with revolutionary reversals, surprises, & competitive upsets..." as far back as the late eighties or early nineties.

At that time, I had also just started to indulge myself in the beautiful writings of economist Paul Zane Pilzer.

The following jottings in my ideas scratchpad came from his brilliant work, particularly 'Unlimited Wealth: The Theory and Practice of Economic Alchemy':

"... The overwhelmingly largest determinant of success today for both the individual & the organisation is the speed with which they can accept, learn, & work with technological change... Prosperity today belongs to the person & organisation that learns new thins the fastest..."

"... The key to achieving financial success today, or success in any field for that matter, is being able to learn new things. And the key to having the ability to learn new things, is developing confidence in your ability to learn...'

"Indeed, technology is advancing on so many fronts that the main constraint on innovation today is not so much the capacity of engineers & entrepreneurs to come up with new ideas, but their ability to keep abreast of & integrate the latest developments from fields outside their own particular specialty..."

Just imagine that he wrote all that in the early nineties, & to me, they are still very relevant today.

As a matter of fact, Dilip Mukerjea has recently made a wonderful observation in an expert advisory to a client [actually, an extract from his currently still 'work-in-progress' book, tentatively entitled 'Brainaissance'] as follows:

"Corporations and capital markets differ in their attitudes towards the forces of creative destruction ~ specifically, in the way they enable and manage this phenomenon. Corporations focus on operations. They aspire to function perpetually as ‘going concerns’, and thus work on the assumption of continuity.

Capital markets have no such concerns — they function on the presumption of discontinuity; their focus is on creation and destruction. Whilst corporations may tolerate long-term underperformance, markets have no qualms about annihilating the underperformer.

Outstanding corporations might stand out amongst the downtrodden, but unless they become perpetual learning organisms, the very processes that led them to success will anchor them to failure.

The choice for organisations: change, on your terms, or be shortchanged on the market’s terms!"

The foregoing insightful observation certainly sums up very well what Dilip has originally in mind when he poses the question as outlined in the foregoing imaginal picture.

[to be continued in the Next Post.]

INGENUITY DEFINED

I particularly like the following definition for ingenuity from Philip McKinney, as outlined his weblog:

"Ingenuity is the power of creative imagination; the quality of being cleverly inventive or resourceful...

Ingenuity is the key ingredient to creating innovation.

Ingenuity is the smallest element of innovation... the spark that starts it off.

Innovation is the outcome of applying the ingenuity of individuals."

I fully concur. It's the result of human ingenuity that allows us to enjoy all the modern conveniences that we see around us today.

As a matter of fact, the following observation from economist & entrepreneur Paul Zane Pilzer, also author of the classic, 'Unlimited Wealth: The Theory & Practice of Economic Alchemy', sums up my sentiment best:

“I realized [that] we were always running out of some resource, but the actual resource we were running out of wasn’t a resource until human ingenuity invented it, and we’re always inventing new resources.”

When he was once posed with the question "Is the Earth being depleted of natural resources?", his response was a swift:

"Nope... That’s because there is plenty of the ultimate natural resource: human ingenuity."