by Annette
19. April 2007
Why is it that the seminal business writers in the last few years have been journalists? Malcolm Gladwell - The Tipping Point, Blink. Thomas Friedman - The World is Flat. Dan Pink - A Whole New Brain. Even one of the NYT's frequent business writers, G. Pascal Zachary, is not trained in business but as a journalist. What is it about the journalistic view that creates business insights?
The journalist is first and foremost an observer. They watch. They analyze. They abstract and conclude from the data. Journalists provide DEW - Distant Early Warnings of trends ahead and what to expect next. In my book, The Five Faces of Genius, I laud this power of the Observer as a creative thinking style. One that acts with great wisdom and power to create.
I love the idea of the great physicist, Richard Feynman who said, "We are not that much smarter than each other." That in fact, as much as we try to discriminate based on 'smarts' in this country, what really differentiates us is our creativity. If journalists can jump in make significant contributions by virtue of their creativity, each of us have the capacity to do so. And if citizen journalism is the next wave, think of the creative contributions to business and anything else any person can make. It's the great democracy of genius.
