In a marketplace measured by meaning and driven by dreams, great ideas, huge ideas, noble ideas mark the pinnacle of human achievement and potential.
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The “bottom-line” has dropped out of externally-based business strategies. (1) As corporations seek to out-manoeuvre each other by squeezing the last juice out of their supply chains, they have become unknowingly ensnared by the inherent fault-line of the digital information race. As the information playing field becomes levelled out by the speed-trap of technology, “Business @ the speed of thought” paradoxically results in a technological “ground hog day”. Speed has now become commoditised, reducing “efficiency” and “effectiveness” to “table-stakes”. (2) Thinking in straight lines, digitally or otherwise, will keep you going round in circles.

Corporate strategy has now moved on from trying to stay one foot ahead of the game, to favouring those who master the skills of innovation, from playing the game by the rules, to generating game-breaking ideas. New business opportunities are now being sought through leveraging the potential of the internal world of human talent to create and innovate. The boundaries of business are being redrawn between the traditional domain of corporate thinking, defined as “the knowledge of business”, and the new realm of corporate transformation, defined as “the business of knowledge”. Releasing and deploying organisational imagination is a strategic imperative in an economy based on ideas, in which brand new marketplaces and new revenue opportunities are created through organic growth, in contrast to the mainstream silo thinking which focuses on the cost cutting race to produce best in class products and services.

The concept of “economic value” has mutated in the marketplace from a quantitative measurement of success, to a qualitative hierarchy of ideas. This transition from economic value to economic creativity marks a paradigm shift from the “Box-Economy”, measured by the optimisation of moving boxes, thinking in boxes, putting people in boxes and exchanging boxes, to the “Lotus-Economy”, measured by personal transformation, creativity and innovation. It has manifested itself as a shift from an economy based on producing and buying things to an economy in which the primary unit of exchange is “meaning” where organisations become hothouses for ideas and the revolution of the human spirit.

As the driving force of business moves from marshalling numbers to innovation, then the central tenet of its pedagogy moves from the logic of control and management, to the logic of creativity and self-investigation. The model of business has transformed from a mechanical structure focused on optimising content, to a university structure focused on breakthrough ideas and self-inquiry.(3) The spirit of inquiry ethically stands in stark contrast to the result-orientated stance of the traditional organisation. As human beings turn inward, and begin to really look, then they can use their sense of mortality to ensure they live lives free from regret. When you live as if you may die at any minute then your motivational energy is transformed exponentially into a noble spirit. As James Dean put it: “Dream as if you live forever, live as if you will die tomorrow.” In a marketplace measured by meaning and driven by dreams, great ideas, huge ideas, noble ideas mark the pinnacle of human achievement and potential.(4)

In the Lotus-Economy the primary unit of investigation is first-person lived experience. The ground spring of innovation and creativity is not be found from moving at the speed of thought but from exploring the space between your thoughts, in the search for new highways and byways of creativity.

The Lotus-Economy is based on the exploration and unity of two worlds: the phenomenological and the physical, combining potential and purpose in the greatest adventure of all which is fulfilling human dreams. The business of the Lotus-Economy is the business of personal leadership, the business of the mind, the business of designing legends.

The Lotus Economy Quadrant

The Lotus-Economy quadrant shows the paradigmatical(5) battle facing leaders who wish to transform their organisations. The top left-hand side shows the traditional business model, focused on controlling the external world through management development and strategic planning. This domain has moved from the clockwork model of the universe and organisational strategy to a world dominated by the concept of the computer. Here human beings are characterised as biological software and their value and competencies are reduced to algorithms.

Executive Boards are the software architects competing in a race to achieve organisational superiority through automating and controlling external variables. The exploration of the internal world of experience is considered illogical.

The dogma of business management and education has marginalised the mind and placed a “taboo on subjectivity.”(6) The logic of the computer world is binary, hard, black and white and results in rigid tramlines of thought which lead to the commoditisation of ideas.(7) Imprisoned by a prohibition, the true potential of the business remains closed up behind the hidden walls of the mind.

The bottom right-hand side of the quadrant is the humanist response to the dehumanising toxic effects of treating people as things, as a series of numbers, which places results above human values. It immediately seems logical from the point of view of liberation of the human spirit. It is an emotionally-based revolution which promotes empowerment as well as open and honest relationships as the basis for organisational transformation. Whilst the humanist approach may be justified as an escape from the tyranny of the digital organisation, its position of philosophical relativism excludes the validity of the external world and leads to paralysis of action and strategy. It is rather like planning a prison break with nothing but words.

The logic of the humanist position leads to the promotion of emotions independent from self-knowledge. Emotions have rightly been let out of the jail of mechanistic thinking, but unless they are married to a mode of self-investigation and self-discipline, which is channelled by motivation, their potential for achievement will remain impotent. Nothing ever happens because there are no tools and techniques which marry the inner world with the outer world to create action. Nothing can happen. You still wake up in prison dreaming of escape after having your parole cut short.

The bottom left-hand side of the quadrant is where life has been surrendered for job security. It is where thinking and risk has been surrendered in return for not challenging the status quo. Here everybody thinks the same so that nobody thinks. Exploration of inner space and outer world is taboo. Other people take care of the important decisions. Everybody marches off in step to the same tune blissfully unaware of the fact that their logic for the future follows a pattern of perpetual circularity.

The top right-hand side of the quadrant calls for an ontological and epistemological revolution of the business world in which self-investigation becomes an organisational science driving creativity and innovation through a union of potential and purpose. Here executives are employed by ideas, not job descriptions. Ideas which are ethically driven by a noble spirit transform leadership into a noble endeavour whose hallmark is the fulfilment of human aspiration.

The top right-hand side of the Lotus Quadrant is a wake up call to the business world to put the mind back in business. Ignoring it is likely to put your organisation out of business.

(1)Thomas L. Friedman, The World is Flat, FSG, 2005; Tom Peters, Re Imagine, DK, 2003; Michael Newman, Creative Leaps, Wiley, 2003; Kevin Roberts, LoveMarks, Powerhouse Books, 2004; W. Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne, Blue Ocean Strategy, HBS, 2006.
(2)Michael Newman, Creative Leaps, Wiley, 2003, see Kevin Roberts, CEO Saatchi & Saatchi, presentation on CD included with book.
(3)Kenneth Cloke & Joan Goldsmith, End of Management, Jossey-Bass, 2002, see the introduction by Warren Bennis.
(4)Howard Gardner, Changing Minds, HBS, 2004, p.40. Please see the discussion on existential intelligence.
(5)A paradigm is a set of rules which organize your experience. It is a vehicle you use to travel in the journey of life. The type of vehicle is not fixed. You can choose whether it is a scooter or a spaceship. The objective of the quadrant is to help you see the models on offer at the organizational showroom. Definition of Paradigmatical: “Exemplary; serving as a pattern; deserving to be proposed for imitation; commendable; as, an exemplary person; exemplary conduct.”
(6)“I shall argue that scientific materialism meets the criteria of a religion according to Durkheim’s theory… This separation of the sacred from the profane gives rise to the formulation of taboos, or interdictions… Thus, within the context of scientific materialism, the subjective realm of human perception, reasoning, and language are set in opposition to the objective realm of the physical world, its inexorable laws, and mathematics. While the objective realm has taken the place of the sacred, the subjective realm has taken the place of the profane… Scientific materialism… is a modern kind of nature religion.” B. Alan Wallace, The Taboo of Subjectivity, OUP, 2000, p.33-35.
(7)Edward de Bono, I am Right you are Wrong (from Rock Logic to Water Logic), Penguin, 1991.