SOSPIRO and the New Renaissance
“The New Renaissance has created a huge opportunity for business to grasp advantage from the flow of fast communications, social connectivities and commercial
uncertainties of the Age of Ambiguity”
David Heslop CEO Mazda/Expotel
The Context for SOSPIRO and the New Renaissance
The huge drivers of population growth, resource management, Web 2.0/3.0, the currency of ideas, climate change legislation and commercial uncertainties have put business into a new context.
Success now and in the future is already judged by different parameters - by companies and stakeholders alike. Profitability and commercial success are linked on a new, ‘triple bottom line’ along with long-term strategy and corporate social responsibility.
SOSPIRO speeds up the journey between where you and your company are NOW and where you would LIKE TO BE in the new business context.
“All our knowledge has its
origins in our perceptions.
In rivers, the water that you
touch is the last of what has
passed and the first of that
which comes; so with present
times”
Leonardo Da Vinci
1452-1519
A brief history of everything...The 5000 Year ViewThe 1000 Year ViewThe Now and Tomorrow View
The 1000 Year View
Changing, by a few degrees, the angle by which we perceive our place in the world, can have profound consequences and repercussions. The delicate balance and hierarchical organisation of Scientific, ‘logic’ and Artistic ‘imagination’ resonates through society from from global issues to individual actions, and the 1000 Year View gives us a window into those consequences.
Whole cultures can favour one method distinctly over the other. In The Enlightenment, where the search for ‘reason and empiricism’ notably excluded the Arts and Ethics, the consequences of working only with logic caused us to lose sight of the ‘wholeness’ of the vision that had sustained us in the period of the Renaissance, where Art, Science, Commerce and Self Awareness were held together in a tight bundle, that represented wealth, influence, civilisation and power.
From ‘Flowering’ (Renaissance) to ‘Progress’ (Enlightenment) the balance went askew, and the Enlightenment view of the sole importance of empiricism, authority and process is still the predominant view today, and does little to prepare us for the challenges ahead, and to truly see a long-term future that is both creative and sustainable. Because our educational and political systems are still focussed on this Enlightenment view, we have an urgent need to ‘reset’ ourselves and consciously develop the ‘blind-spot’ in many of our individuals, leaders and organisations - and begin the journey towards a new, contemporary ‘Rennaisance’ style of ‘doing and thinking’ - a ‘Co-Intelligence’.
Time and Movements
This diagram shows the timeline, and the shifting priorities of two most recent great movements in Science, the Arts and Society up to the present day. The incredible acceleration of Scientific thinking and progress that had brought us to both the Industrial Revolutions and the present-day Knowledge Revolution, has left us with only a 2-dimensional, empirical view of the future, manifesting itself in short-termism, and has left the ‘third dimension’ of the Arts, far behind in the hierarchy of importance.
As we so urgently need to be able to see the future clearly, and apply great strategies that will serve to sustain and develop society, business and individuals, we must be aware that the tools of empiricism and process alone will not serve us well. To see the future in a new frame, and to prosper, the balance of Science and Art needs to be addressed urgently, in a combined ‘Co-Intelligence’ In individuals and organisations a ‘Co-Intelligence’ will open gateways of understanding, and add models of creativity, collaboration, growth and behaviours that have sustained previous cultures for thousands of years, and prepare us for the huge challenges ahead. The consequences of ignoring this are all too clear, and are imminent. The ‘tools’ for achieving this ‘re-balance’ are there for us to take, and have been with us for thousands of years.
Where sustainability of mankind is our goal, (even more so than ‘saving the planet’) to start to try to understand the context without Art as a central theme, equal to Science, is in itself unsustainable. The ‘New Renaissance’ awaits us.