CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE
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2016: The Politics of Gen Y’s Kickstarter Capitalism
Two articles, one in the online Politico and the other in the Wall Street Journal, reinforce my belief that a new kind of antiestablishmentarian centrist-populist-capitalist politics is being born in the US. I first began to talk about this trend in my book Creative Intelligence because the young entrepreneurs out of Brooklyn, Manhattan, San Francisco, Austin, Portland, Chicago and elsewhere in the country, the new makers of the Maker Culture, baffled me. They were intensely capitalistic, in the sense of wanting to set up their own companies and build their own networks and organizations, but were profoundly anti Big Business and anti-globalization. Their focus was on hyper-local, community, and making profits to support their like-minded community. Kickstarter was at the heart of this new capitalism.
In sense , this cohort is anti-political. Young, able to build their own institutions and entrepreneurial, these men and women face away from the political system because their see no role in it. They hate it.
But what if a “radicalized center” begins to speak for them and to them? What is someone like Democrat Elizabeth Warren decides to run for the President in 2016–or even Bruce Springsteen-loving Republican Chris Christy?
Opposing both the Tea Party and Occupy but sharing their anti-Washington and anti-Big Business perspectives. this new movement is just taking form in time for the 2016 Presidential elections.
Check out this piece:
The other story, The Radicalized Center, by Gerald Seib, is in the WSJ today –which I can’t link to because I get the FT, not the WSJ–so check that out if you can.
One thing to keep in mind–this growing maybe-movement is not against capitalism but FOR capitalism–startup, entrepreneurial capitalism. Practically all policy and regulation and money in Washington focuses on promoting Big Business, Big Agriculture and Big Banks. What if the focus were on creating NEW, smaller companies (where all the job growth is)? What if we had Kickstarter Capitalism in America?
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Who is Really Creative? Great Review of Creative Intelligence Out of Portland
I just love this review of the book by the Portland Book Review. It captures the message of Creative Intelligence which is that we are ALL creative and can learn to be MORE creative.
http://www.portlandbookreview.com/tag/creative-intelligence-harnessing-the-power-to-create/
I’ve been speaking at Google, Microsoft and a lot of other companies in the past weeks about the message of Creative Intelligence it is remarkable how many engineers, doctors, scientists and other “analytical” people say they are not creative–only to prove they really are once I ask them what they actually do.
Anyone who is good at seeing patterns is creative. People who do that using numbers and , engineers for example, typically don’t see themselves as creative. BUT THEY ARE!
I will be speaking at Ziba Design, one of the greatest design and innovation consultancies in the world, in PDX on May 9. It’s founder, Sohrab Vossoughi, taught me that Design is not just about process and thinking but about love–that powerful attraction you feel for an object, an experience. It’s about the beckoning, the aura, the culture. Come and have a conversation with us. The book has great stories of Ziba’s research and success in China.
And it will be on sale there if you don’t want to buy it now on Amazon or B&N.