This is the third in my summer reading rediscoveries. This time after a 12-month lapse since starting Daniel H. Pink’s A Whole New Mind (original hardcopy edition.) A year ago, I just didn’t get pulled in by the Introduction and Chapter-One and I had set the book aside. This week I picked up with Chapter-Two and was immediately drawn to go to the finish, albeit with occasional skimming. Compared to my earlier book reading this week (Presence, by Peter Senge et al.), this was an easy and practical read, truly ‘summer reading.’
Many others have reviewed the book at amazon.com and in blogs. In the latter, my three favorites are:
- Garr Reynold’s (Presentation Zen) that includes an original summary graphic and application to the art of presentation
- Shawn Callahan’s favorable review
- Donald Clark’s negative review. My thoughts here:
- Throughout the book Pink emphasizes that the logical and analytical abilities associated with the left hemisphere are still required and valued — i.e. “L-Directed Thinking remains necessary but no longer sufficient…” (p.61) This seems to have been largely discounted by Donald as he wrote: “…a future dominated by creative free-thinkers, artists, designers, storytellers and big picture thinkers – what a ludicrous thought!”
- Where I agree with Donald is that the book is not a rigorous treatment of the topics and is written from a western, primarily USA-centric, view that does not adequately look to the future evolution of India, China and other nations — nor even to their current contributions beyond “cheaper” labor.
All-in-all as someone that is a product of the knowledge worker ascendancy (e.g. with my Engineering and MBA degrees), I found some value in both the rationale and practical tips for building strength in R(ight hemisphere)-Directed capabilities. I plan to add several of the ‘portfolio’ tips to my personal practice.
Closing note: to the Design sense portfolio tips, I’d add Phil McKinney’s blog and Killer Innovations podcast series — one of the first podcasts I seriously followed, and still a favorite.
Ray – you’ve been reading some books that I’ve been wanting to read for a while, but I never seem to have time. But I would love to hear what you find to be the more important points from the books – more than a simple review. Any chance?