Link Magic Craze

In an earlier blog posting that I wrote 23 days ago, I identified WE LINK, THEREFORE WE ARE as an Internet-induced phenomenon that has engulfed the world as a result of the Information Revolution, (which management guru Peter Drucker happened to talk much about.) The first example that I cited was "奧氏英語 in Japan". Since then, I've already noticed 2 more candidates that fit well into this category, namely:

• The first YouTube Symphony Orchestra
• Guerrilla Gardening

And I expected more would be forthcoming. Still, the latest star to hit the news is a surprising one. It is the rise of the Three Wolf Moon Tshirt from a meaga sale of 2 to 3 a day to a mega one at 100 an hour, powered inadvertently by a joke review made by a reviewer on amazon.com, as is reported on this video.

According to another report in New York Times:

The magic, it turned out, was not so much the undeniably totemic power of the shirt, now endorsed by about 700 other similarly rapturous, if not entirely serious, reviewers, but the lesson in the inscrutable power of online culture that it provided. Like the butterfly wings creating the tornado, Mr. Govern inadvertently helped set off an almost impossible marketing bonanza and pop-culture craze: The shirt has been Amazon’s top-selling item of apparel every day since May 19, and it has morphed into one of those instant icons of Internet culture.

“This is something a lot of companies spend $100 million trying to do and for us it just happened, and we embraced it early on,” said Michael McGloin, an art school dropout and creative director of the Mountain, the New Hampshire-based company that made the shirt.... “You could not dream of getting this worldwide notoriety for a T-shirt, but it became a viral visual,” Mr. McGloin said....

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The Third Drucker

Peter Drucker is acclaimed the Father of Modern Management. It is also known that he didn't like to be called a consultant, although much of his career was consist of giving advice to corporations. Instead, he saw himself as a social ecologist.

Yet, as this Concept Map seeks to demonstrated, deep in Drucker's heart, the results that he truly valued for his life were those of a mentor, that is, how he made an impact on the life of others....

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Jim Collins vis-a-vis Drucker

According to Jim Collins, when he first visited Peter Drucker to seek for his advice, he was "at a crossroad, trying to decide whether to jettison a traditional path...." (Management, pp. xvi)

This is how he remembered that meeting:

We settled in the living room, with Drucker asking questions from his favorite wicker chair, probing, pushing, challenging. He gave freely of his wisdom, asking nothing in return. He simply wanted to contribute to my development at what was then a pivotal stage of my career; I was only thirty-six years of age with no significant reputation. His generosity of spirit explains much of Drucker’s immense influence. I reflected back on his work, The Effective Executive, and his admonition to replace the quest for success with the quest for contribution. The critical question is not, “How can I achieve?” but “What can I contribute?”

--Forward, The Daily Drucker

This Concept Map is an attempt to explore how that meeting might have made a lasting influence on Jim Collins' subsequent work and thinking.

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Concept Mapping versus Mind Mapping

The mind map can be contrasted with the similar idea of concept mapping. The former is based on radial hierarchies and tree structures denoting relationships with a central governing concept, whereas concept maps are based on connections between concepts in more diverse patterns.

--Wikipedia

Mind Maps reflect what you think about a topic. By taking a brainstorming approach to generating and organizing ideas, Mind Maps seek to improve performance by enhancing the capability of the human brain.

Concept Maps, on the other hand, are focused on the relationship between concepts. They allow the brain to make meaning by (i) presenting information in a visual format, and more significantly, (ii) connecting the meaning so generated with other information to further generate new meaning.

This grow-as-you-go spiral effect of the information sense-making process is now greatly enhanced by the new interactive capabilities of Web 2.0 applications such as MindMeister, which makes Concept Mapping the tool of choice over Mind Mapping for idea organization and development as the world moves on from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age.

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香港新論述，新角色

[Originally presented at PES CME Dialogue]

In an article posted on the web by Leader To Leader, (No.16, Spring 2000,) Peter Drucker outlined one of his famous observations: “Managing Knowledge Means Managing Oneself”. This was how he began:

In a few hundred years, when the history of our time will be written from a long-term perspective, it is likely that the most important event historians will see is not technology, not the Internet, not e-commerce. It is an unprecedented change in the human condition. For the first time -- literally -- substantial and rapidly growing numbers of people have choices. For the first time, they will have to manage themselves. And society is totally unprepared for it.

Drucker was amazingly forward-looking. Indeed, momentous disruptive changes—an oft-repeated theme in Drucker’s writings—are already breaking through into our world today, right before our eyes. At other discussion group meetings, I identified the following as massive global changes that have taken place since the turn of the century.

Disruptive Changes in the Global Context

1. 2008: the beginning of the 21st Century;
2. Collapse of Market Fundamentalism: The end of Capitalism as we knew it;
3. Civilization's historic crossover into the era of Ubiquitous Knowledge.

Massive Global Shifts in terms of Content

1. Link to Think: The rise of the We-Link-therefore-We-Are generation;
2. The phenomenal expansion of the Global Middle Class;
3. Yin Yang (陰陽) as a prevailing way of seeing black and white.

I believe these are significant factors that serve well as a backdrop for discussions on the future of marketplace ministry in HK, which I propose may include:

1. 香港新論述：回歸中國社會/回應世界轉變
2. 香港新角色：「一人企業」的支援及培訓

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(updated June 10, 2009)

Benny Chin

090425