Our guest speaker earlier this month was John Seely Brown. The event was a success; an engaging talk by JSB and dinner afterward with him. Here are a few excerpts from our DMBA student who attended the event.
In Michelle Dawson's words:
John Seely Brown was an incredible speaker, and what he had to say was very much inline with what we are talking about across our program. At dinner he stressed the importance of what we are learning in the DMBA program and the need to share this knowledge and way of thinking with others.
Overall he shared with us the importance of having a questing disposition and his belief that in the next century the purpose of the firm will be to accelerate capability building in order to build talent. He believes that the key to this is collaboration and exponential learning, learning from others as they learn from you.
The old ways of doing things will not work anymore. In our changing world we have to run faster and faster and yet we don't get as far. Each new increment is exponentially harder to achieve. How might we flip this curve? JSB believes that collaboration could be the answer to instead harness our work effects so that the more people participate the better the effect of our efforts can be.
JSB shared with us a story about surfing that really gets to the heart of what so many of our projects and learning here in the DMBA program is about. A group of young boys joined together to form a cohort which enables them to learn from each other and with each other to push themselves to the edge of their abilities to perform at high levels and ultimately to create a whole new type of surfing. EACH member of his or her cohort is now a world champion. They try new things, fail continuously, critique each other and use the information and technology available to learn from other champion surfers around the world. In addition, they study other adjacent fields to think about how moves from other extreme sports relate to what they are doing.
What this group really has that makes them stand out is their questing disposition: they are looking for new ideas anywhere they go. With this passionate drive and questing mentality, they can collaborate to push each other to new levels of extreme performance. This can relate to firms and larger systems by leveraging technology to think about how we can work together to build on each other's knowledge. Instead of fighting for each increment of change how can we lift each other to reach new heights together?
Picture from the dinner afterward:
