Attending the Chronicle on Higher Education Executive Leadership Forum in D.C. today, I had a chance to hear Dan Pink again. Dan is the phenom who wrote A Whole New Mind, and he is always an engaging speaker.

There is a metaphor for what’s going on in global economy, Dan says, and that metaphor is hte brain, consisting of a left and right hemisphere. Logical, linear, sequential, and analytical are the specialties of the left side of the brain. They capabilities are still very necessary but they are no longer sufficient. Processing things at once, recognizing context, and synthesis rather than analysis are specialties of the right side of the brain. The need for these capabilities is in ascendancy in the global economy.

There are three reasons the scales are tilting toward the right brain:

(1) Abundance

(2) Asia

(3) Automation

Abundance:

Bad news that happens fast always gets our attention. But good news happening slowly has more effect. The long trend that we do not recognize is toward greater prosperity and it is transforming the world.

Consumption spreads faster today. In 1990 1% of households had mobile phones. Today, 87% of households have mobile phones.

In a world of abundance, you have two business strategies:

There is a premium on giving people something they didn't know they needed. The iPod is the best example. Ten years ago, did you know you needed an iPod? Big, bold, inventive strategy is always the best strategy.

But the other strategy is to take a mundane product or service and distinguish it through design, aesthetics, or narrative.

Everything is a combination of utility and significance.

We are living in a significance economy.

Asia:

Offshoring is massively overhyped in the short term. It has not yet had a big effect in the short run. Fewer jobs have been offshored than the number of jobs that turn over in two or three months. But the effects of offshoring are underhyped in the long run.

How many people were at work in the US economy last month: 146 million people What if only 15% Indians make it to the status of being educated, talented and ambitious? That’s 150 million people. By 2010, India will become the largest English speaking country. And the cost of communication between India and the US is free.

Routine work now races to the cheapest cost provider. And typically, that is in Asia. We’ve seen this movie before. Routine manufacturing work left, and it is not coming back. (But the US is still the largest manufacturing nation in the world. However, what’s left is sophisticated manufacturing work.) We can expect this pattern to repeat itself with white collar work that can be automated and made routine.

Automation:

Certain kinds of brain work that used to get you into the middle class is now routine. Software is now doing to white collar work what machines did to blue collar work.

Law school used to be something to 'fall back on." But even legal work can be outsourced. An uncontested divorce in DC costs $2500. Doing it online costs you $199.

We used to think of law as an august profession. But what happens when a site like 123 DivorceMe.com? Sort of takes the august-ness out of the whole enterprise, doesn't it?

One million US tax returns were done in India last month (and Indian accountants make $500 per month) Twenty-one million Americans used Turbo-Tax to do their taxes.

So ask yourselves:

Can someone overseas do it cheaper?

Can it be automated?

Can you use your abilities to create new things?

Math and science are not routine disciplines. They increasingly are right brain activities. What defies routine is what is increasingly important.

Increasingly, professionals will need to toggle between both sides of their brain.

(As he has honed his message over years now, Dan now downplays design as front and center to his message, and defends math and science as nonroutine, right brain activities.)

Six Abilities that Matter

Design - Design thinking solves problems.

Story - We live in a world of ubiquitous facts, and they are free. What matters is putting facts in context .

Empathy - Hard to automate and outsource. Empathy correlates very well with patient outcomes. M-CAT scores do not correlate.

Play

Meaning - Not just accumulation but meaning.

Symphony - Not just focus but also symphony. The ability to take a step back, see the big picture and connect the dots. Study that tested "stars" of various organizations as identified by their peers found just one cognitive ability that distinguished star performers from average: pattern recognition, the big picture thinking that allows leaders to pick out the meaningful trends from a welter of information around them and to think strategically far into the future (Daniel Goleman).