Product Description

Lawyers. Accountants. Radiologists. Software engineers. That's what our parents encouraged us to become when we grew up. But Mom and Dad were wrong. The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind. The era of "left brain" dominance, and the Information Age that it engendered, are giving way to a new world in which "right brain" qualities-inventiveness, empathy, meaning-predominate. That's the argument at the center of this provocative and original book, which uses the two sides of our brains as a metaphor for understanding the contours of our times.

In the tradition of Emotional Intelligence and Now, Discover Your Strengths, Daniel H. Pink offers a fresh look at what it takes to excel. A Whole New Mind reveals the six essential aptitudes on which professional success and personal fulfillment now depend, and includes a series of hands-on exercises culled from experts around the world to help readers sharpen the necessary abilities. This book will change not only how we see the world but how we experience it as well.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12717 in Books
• Published on: 2005-03-24
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 272 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Just as information workers surpassed physical laborers in economic importance, Pink claims, the workplace terrain is changing yet again, and power will inevitably shift to people who possess strong right brain qualities. His advocacy of "R-directed thinking" begins with a bit of neuroscience tourism to a brain lab that will be extremely familiar to those who read Steven Johnson's Mind Wide Open last year, but while Johnson was fascinated by the brain's internal processes, Pink is more concerned with how certain skill sets can be harnessed effectively in the dawning "Conceptual Age." The second half of the book details the six "senses" Pink identifies as crucial to success in the new economy-design, story, symphony, empathy, play and meaning-while "portfolio" sections offer practical (and sometimes whimsical) advice on how to cultivate these skills within oneself. Thought-provoking moments abound-from the results of an intensive drawing workshop to the claim that "bad design" created the chaos of the 2000 presidential election-but the basic premise may still strike some as unproven. Furthermore, the warning that people who don't nurture their right brains "may miss out, or worse, suffer" in the economy of tomorrow comes off as alarmist. But since Pink's last big idea (Free Agent Nation) has become a cornerstone of employee-management relations, expect just as much buzz around his latest theory.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
"Abundance, Asia, and automation." Try saying that phrase five times quickly, because if you don't take these words into serious consideration, there is a good chance that sooner or later your career will suffer because of one of those forces. Pink, best-selling author of Free Agent Nation (2001) and also former chief speechwriter for former vice-president Al Gore, has crafted a profound read packed with an abundance of references to books, seminars, Web sites, and such to guide your adjustment to expanding your right brain if you plan to survive and prosper in the Western world. According to Pink, the keys to success are in developing and cultivating six senses: design, story, symphony, empathy, play, and meaning. Pink compares this upcoming "Conceptual Age" to past periods of intense change, such as the Industrial Revolution and the Renaissance, as a way of emphasizing its importance. Ed Dwyer
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Tom Peters, author of In Search of Excellence and Re-Imagine!
"This book is a miracle."

Customer Reviews

Insightful and visionary for our futures in business...
I read this title by Dan Pink after discovering "The Adventures of Johnny Bunko". Mr. Pink's application of Manga for this writing was excellent. After reviewing the sample for the Kindle, I was all in on this title. The book is insightful and informative. There is a new revolution in business in our culture that is gaining momentum. This book provides insight as to how to get into the curve before the revolution overruns our value in the job market. If you are concerned with our professional futures, Dan provides a thought process to adjust to for our collective futures. Dan's writing style insures that stats and data are delivered in a way that is entertaining and captivating. Don't wait. This information is needed by businesses and professionals now! Stay ahead of the curve in this revolution.

Too shallow and simplistic
I bought this book recently but after a few pages it just became too simplistic in its content and I began to wonder whether it was even worth the effort to write such a book unless of course you can make some money from sticking a few ideas down on paper. It appears that hardly any serious reserach and investigation had been done to support the thesis. Waste of money as it could be sped read in the bookshop in about 5 minutes and you would learn just as much as you would from buying the book.

Huh?
There's only one, leeeeetle, itsy-bitsy problem with this book: There is no such thing as a "right-brain thinker." Nobody really takes the right-brain/left-brain distinction seriously anymore. It's fun, silly, pop psychology, and nothing more. It's kind of like the old wives tale (also untrue) that we only use 10% of our brains. It's simply not true that people who are more creative are more "right brained," etc. There are people who, for various reasons, have had to undergo psychosurgery wherein an entire hemisphere of their brain is removed. If the right half of their brain was removed you would think that their creative side would be gone, and that they'd be left with a left-brained analytical outlook. Not so. Simply doesn't happen. It takes them a while to adapt, but the brain does adapt. The brain is high in plasticity, and most functions are distributed throughout the entire brain. Further--and for many this is the real shocker--neuroscience is far less scientific than most people realize. It's simply not true that when people engage in certain activities that certain parts of the brain "light up." Rather, somewhat crude algorithms are used, and the different parts of the brain that "light up" for different people are averaged. For anyone interested I recommend Neural Theories of Mind, and then The New Phrenology, both by William Uttal.