Creative conversion

By Pae Ki-pyo

Rolf Jensen, a Danish futurist, predicted in his book ``The Dream Society,” that society will evolve from an industrial one that values material goods to an information-based society where people exchange knowledge, to ultimately a dream society where mankind trades values of dreams such as passion, self-identity and stories.

I believe what is essential to such a dream society is creative convergence. I, as a CPA and management consultant, would like to introduce the relationship between creative integration and the achievement of dreams.

The keywords for effective global management paradigms are network, a win-win approach and integrative thinking called consilience. The age of the network allows consciousness and technology to converge, and individual intellectual capabilities to combine with technology, thus growing to collective intelligence.

A CEO needs to encourage voluntary participation, sharing and open-mindedness among the members of a network. In other words, a CEO should see the members as companions with whom he or she lives, try to recognize their sincerity and collect their ideas in order to achieve a dream.

The members, in turn, will understand that they are the ones who are to participate in creating values in the organization and on integrative thinking, will continue to create original values. IBM runs a system called ``Innovation Jam” in order to launch high-tech products. About 150,000 people exchange creative ideas through the value network. Through such efforts, they can create new sources of profits and novel values, and carry out innovative work.

Intel operates a program called ``PPR (People and Practice Research)” by which psychologists, anthropologists, financial officers, marketers, and consumers worldwide gather together to create new businesses.

One of the noticeable examples of a win-win approach is ``Google Cluster, '' an open corporate network. Through the platform, Google and its partners have produced and shared innovative ideas in order to realize their dream of maximizing customers' comfort. These examples convince me to believe that children dreaming of becoming a CEO, need to make efforts to be creative, broad-minded, and share their dreams. Education of humanity and creation should be strengthened.

Consilience is available in various fields such as humanities and science. A knowledge big-bang and synergy effects occur when convergence takes place between different fields of academia and science. The fields with active convergence based on consilience (i.e. integrative thinking) are nanotechnology, life science, information science and cognitive science. People can create such novel businesses as nano-design, robotics, and virtual simulation.

Consilience has generated new power sources for sustainable development of countries and companies. The EU established the ``Converging Technologies for the European Knowledge Society (CTEKS)” in 2004, including environmental science, social science and humanities as well as the fields aforementioned.

In 2008, Korea set up the Master Plan for National Converging Technology Development. Creative conversion on a single goal, ``a dream," gets high-profile attention at a national level. Schools need to convey the message to students that cooperation and interaction among studies are key to the creation of the future society where convergence of knowledge will upgrade the welfare of humanity.

I believe that in the future society, different thoughts, technologies and lifestyles will be gathered together toward a good dream, in order to create new values. The catalyst for achieving the dream is creative convergence, i.e. consilience. Therefore, children, the leaders of the future, should learn the heart of future education, ``creative conversion."

The writer is CEO of Copetition Consulting Company, and a CPA in Delaware, the United States. He can be reached at consultant@snu.ac.kr.