After alchemy? Philanthropy
There are "elephants" and "fleas". Elephants (organizations) are solid and stable; fleas (innovators) are light and mobile. Organizations strive to be efficient but efficiency is the enemy of innovation. Therefore, fleas don't fit easily into efficient organizations,
You have to hand it to Charles Handy. He keeps it interesting. As management thinkers, go, and they do tend to go rather quickly, Handy has the vital knack of putting concepts in memorable nutshells. After all, he did coin the term "portfolio worker", and he is synonymous with the concept of the end of the "job for life", and those ideas alone have earned him a place in the management guru Valhalla, where Peter Drucker now looks down upon Tom Peters and Gary Hamel.
When Handy turned his attention to entrepreneurship, he opted for "alchemist" over "entrepreneur" because he believes that alchemy emphasizes the near magic of what these people do. And what they do is miraculous new ideas, new products, new art, new design and new institutions. You can't have a thriving economy without them, says the Kildare-born guru. In a blow to those who believe that all we need is a net connection in a house by the beach, Handy says that innovation flourishes best in the urban environment, where like minds inspire one another in "clusters" and where risk-taking is encouraged. So, apart from the black cloak and the magic wand, how can you spot an alchemist? They've got vision, energy, determination and, above all, passion, he says. And woe to education systems that place too much emphasis on "academic intelligence" he adds, for that is the way to stamp out budding alchemists.
So what comes after alchemy? Why, gold, of course. But once you've made it, you have to give it away otherwise you'll become a miser and an outcast. Handy now calls himself a "social philosopher" and it's in this role that he'll be the keynote speaker at the it@cork conference tomorrow. His presentation will be based on his upcoming book, "The New Philanthropists: Making a Difference".
