Nothing ever stays the same. However much we want life to go on as normal, it never does. Business forecasting is often soothsaying as much as science, no matter how hard management science tries to prove the opposite. Using scientific research-based principles to improve an organization’s ability to make rational business management decisions may be a useful discipline, but on its own spells trouble.
The Neuromarketing Blog is published and authored by Roger Dooley. It is well worth following as it brings together the fast moving world of neuroscience and applies it to marketing. In marketing and product development these days convergence is an analytical concept, where two or more technologies are brought together to produce new value. Some of the best documented examples are in the IT field and include VOIP or webconferencing, for example. One of my sons has built a business in the field of IT convergence (strategicpath.com.au).
This phenomenon of convergence is occurring across many sciences and between science and storytelling. Science likes predictability. Storytelling frequently explains phenomena. The overlaps are obvious. I lived for many years in Corsica, a place where the oral tradition is social architecture. Storytelling in leadership development is now common with a rash of books following Stephen Denning’s The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling.
Much interesting research is going on at the intersection of meditation and neuroscience, for example. Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain by Sharon Begley documents much of the collaborative work going on between Buddhist monks and brain researchers looking at how we can actually change our brains by using our minds. Spiritual and scientific convergence.
There is exciting work going on in the field of neuroplasticity – the brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life. For example, if one hemisphere of the brain is damaged, the intact hemisphere may take over some of its functions. The brain compensates for damage in effect by reorganizing and forming new connections between intact neurons.
Why is this important for business? We can no longer take anything for granted; some of what we thought were business givens, almost business axioms, are far from being so. The current focus on sustainability often implies the idea of sustaining a business for ever. Why, I wonder? Companies can outlive their purpose. Taking a systems view of business allows for change as the elements of the system interact. As chemical engineers or particle physicists know, interactions produce new structures, altered magnetism.
In business it is important to see how convergence (interaction) produces discontinuity (opportunity).