Arithmetical number crunching in business always has limitations. Perhaps that?s why the first alphabet letter A looks blocked, sans a horizon. But the letter V opens wide into infinity, it drives unrestrained vision for achievement that is sustainable.
When an enterprise has the guts to put its product or service in the V-drive, intelligently weaving in end-customer driven innovative R&D, success becomes obvious. There could be lots of turbulence in that journey, but a win is certain. This is what happened to Apple since incorporation in 1977. The company remained coherent in the V-drive of innovation. Today, Apple is the world?s largest technology firm selling consumer electronics, computer software and commercial servers, with annual revenues of over $60 billion. The iPod continues to addict different generations.
A sustainable vision is the winning character of a business. Business can have unlimited projections when the prospect is open in the V act. Of course execution can be done arithmetically in stages, with products getting improved in different generations. If corporate or product strategy is put into V-drive, you bring continuity into different generations of deliverables.
The two-finger V sign gesture was used to represent victory during World War II. In the 1960s counterculture protests against US involvement in the Vietnam War, ?V? was adopted as a sign of peace which even John Lennon popularised on a poster and in song. But my adventures into different human dimensions culminate in an aspirational direction, which makes you drive for vision achievement. In the clash of negatives and positives that neurons in your mind get stimulated with, you can win smoothly with a vision if you avoid mere number crunching.
The open-at-the-top letter V is powerful and visionary whereas A is for arithmetic, the oldest, most used, most elementary branch of mathematics. It can encompass advanced science and business calculations too. We cannot advance to the next level without ?A? yet it?s symbolically constrained when you look up.
Using statistical information alone can give you a narrow ?A? vision, either in professional or personal life. Take the concept of globalisation which Pankaj Ghemawat of Spain?s IESE Business School says has surprisingly low global integration indicators. There are only 2% university students outside their home countries, just 3% people live outside their birth country, rice traded across borders is only 7% while foreigners as directors of S&P 500 companies is a mere 7% too. Of global GDP, only 20% is equivalent to exports. Vital for globalisation are air travel and ocean shipping, but bilateral treaties and cartels restrict their free-flow operations.
In contrast, the V-act of globalisation has unparalleled innovation, as happened in the West in the last century, from aircraft to the Internet. Society went through exceptional turbulence as well. Was discomfort intentionally generated to create a hunger for innovation where the innovator gains as well as imposes his power? Innovations prove the strength of human intelligence to enhance living comfort. Toyota?s Corolla grew robust in V-drive since 1966, connecting to consumer trends by upgrading value. Placing corporate transformation or product design in the V-platform from inception can make you unique and take you far. Even in personal life if you continuously nurture stimuli in the victory mode, your intellectual capacity will build up to take you into leadership mode.
Living in France for over 35 years I?ve absorbed the unbeatable mechanism of the V-process, and have learnt that without putting the V-drive into action, V achievement gets left behind. Considered among the most cultured of societies, France uniquely incorporates innovation and philosophy, and nurtured intellectuals and inventors like Pascal, Pierre and Marie Curie and Pasteur. French innovations, such as Concorde and TGV in the 20th century have vastly contributed to the world?s progress. Yet, over centuries, very little of innovations emanating from France was converted to business to power world markets. Closeted parochially in their geographical hexagon, France does not engage in global public relations to publicise the country?s innovative power. Other countries have converted France?s innovative recipes into application and business.
Here?s an example: French inventors Joseph Nicephore Niepce and Louis Jacques Mande Adgurre ushered in modern photography in the 1820s. It was American John Wesley Hyatt who commercially used celluloid photography in 1868, and George Eastman invented dry photographic film for commercial use in the Kodak camera in 1888. In contrast, American inventor Thomas Alva Edison commercialized most of his innovations like the motion picture camera and the light bulb, and created one of the most successful corporations, General Electric.
Human innovative power resides in the ever-widening V-sphere which needs to action to make contributions to society. In any field, the maverick?s vision, knowledge and skill will always be ahead of its time. Society should always encourage deviant thinkers without conditions, so they can contribute by becoming more and more ground-breaking and victorious in their own specialised fields.
It?s about time that out-of-the-box innovations on the V-drive bypass the destructive ways of human beings and Nature, and cater to a higher level of human need and desire. The top ten 21st century innovation topics according to scientist Eugene S. Meieran at Intel, USA, are reminiscent of how to take society forward through Energy conservation, Resource protection, Food and water production and distribution, Waste management, Education and learning, Medicine and prolonging life, Security and counter-terrorism, New technology, Genetics and cloning and Global communication. A new type of struggle must emerge in this century so we drive V, achieve vision.
There is appalling imbalance on the innovative platform among people from different parts of the world. Caucasian Western society has been able to usurp superiority status upto now through inventions. If all emerging economy nations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America dive into innovation, global power equations will change and a balanced power equation will result between the West and the rest of the world. How can this be done? Keep the A-platform for arithmetical number crunching, but make it subservient to the guiding V-drive. V-drive is for vision achievement that is endless.
Shombit Sengupta is an international Creative Business Strategy consultant to top management. Reach him at http://www.shiningconsulting.com