IBM 2010 Global CEO Study:

Creativity chosen as Most Crucial Factor for Future Success

According to a new IBM survey of more than 1,500 Chief Executive Officers from 60 nations and 33 industries, chief executives support that — more than rigor, management discipline, integrity or even vision — successfully controlling a growing complex world will ask for creativity.

CEOs believe that their enterprises are adequately ready to manage a highly volatile, increasingly complicated business environment. CEOs are confronted with large number of shifts – new government rules, changes in global economic power centers, accelerated industry transformation, rapidly evolving customer preferences – that, according to the researches, can be overcome by instilling “creativity” throughout the company.

More than 60 percent of CEOs believe industry transformation is the top factor putting affords to uncertainty, and the finding indicates a need to explore innovative methods of managing an organization’s finances, structure, and strategy.

The researches also uncover starkly strategic priorities and concerns among CEOs in Asia, Japan, Europe or North America.

Frank Kern, senior vice president said: “Coming out of the worst economic downturn in our professional lifetimes — and facing a new normal that is distinctly different — it is remarkable that CEOs identify creativity as the number one leadership competency of the successful enterprise of the future”.

Ignorance is not bliss: Edward de Bono

Ignorance is not bliss, says globally renowned thinker Edward de Bono, who instead calls on people to face up to their problems – and then learn how to shrug them off.

Dr de Bono, a renowned author and inventor of the term lateral thinking, is in Australia to speak at the Happiness and its Causes conference which is underway in Sydney this week.

“Is ignorance bliss? My answer is no,” Dr de Bono told AAP on Wednesday.

“We can do better than ignorance, we can develop the ‘shrug’ which means ‘yes, okay, someone is saying nasty things about me but I don’t care’.”

Dr de Bono said people needed to “think about things that make them less happy” before they could take any steps that may be needed to solve their problems.

The “ignorance is bliss” prescription for happiness appeared to require “retreating from the world”, he said.

“That idea can lead to a type of happiness, or tranquillity,” Dr de Bono said.

“That is one approach, but personally I think it is less interesting than the one which says, ‘I’m going to be happy because I’m doing things, achieving things’.”

He pointed to the round-the-world sailing effort of Queensland teenager Jessica Watson, and said the imminent completion of her voyage would give her a “tremendous sense of happiness”.

That feeling was the result of triumphing over the challenges posed by her environment – in this case spending months alone in often treacherous open sea – and not by seeking to remain unaware of those risks.

“That must give her, and her family, a tremendous sense of happiness,” Dr de Bono said.

“And it is hard to believe that you could achieve that just by retreating from the world.”

“I’m not against the Buddhist notion of tranquillity (leading to) happiness, but I am against the belief that that is the only way to get happiness.”

Dr de Bono also floated two radical ideas: that Australia could house an international “Palace of Thinking” and also that cats have a significant advantage over humans.

“Somewhere in the world I want to set up a Palace of Thinking,” he said.

“It would be a platform to receive ideas from anywhere and to promote the better ideas (and) organise specific creative meetings about world problems and issues.

“That could be set up in Australia.”

In terms of his second idea about cats, he said the human species would benefit from learning how to purr, because a smile was too fleeting to adequately represent what was being felt.

“A smile is a very evanescent thing, but a purr is continuous. We should train people to purr,” Dr de Bono said.

Australians had every reason to be happy, he added.

“It is my favourite country,” Dr de Bono said.

“I mean you’re as big at the United States with only 22 million people, and nice kangaroos.”

© 2010 AAP
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