and reducing our creative capital, is now at its lowest level of popularity ever.
We believe that it is imperative to build a
different work environment, offering a different set of incentives in order to stimulate the people to find solutions to the pressing problems of the world, thus improving our lives in a sustainable way and advancing human civilisation to the point where it is ready to expand beyond our terrestrial biosphere.
The new economic paradigm that is
emerging is all about collaboration. It is about cooperation rather than competition, helping the next guy to succeed rather than viewing him as a threat. It is about spreading wealth around, in essence, it is about ubuntu.
The Cartesian conception of individuality fails to acknowledge this, and instead exaggerates the solitary aspects of human existence while largely ignoring the relationship aspects.
Ubuntu asks us to think of the individual not as a solitary, self-sufficient entity who exists independent to the rest of society, but rather as individual human beings in relation to the rest of creation. Ubuntu considers our interconnectedness, our common humanity and our shared wisdom and know-how.
together. Ubuntu encourages participation and sets out to build consensus and a common vision accepted by all who are involved.
Ubuntu says: “I am because we are. Your pain
is my pain, your prosperity is my prosperity, your salvation is my salvation,” in effect the exact antithesis of the current greed–driven capitalist model.
Ubuntu, for the uninitiated is a traditional African philosophy that sets out to build and maintain a true sense of ‘community’ through compassion, reciprocity, dignity, harmony, and humanity. Through mutual-support and a positive outlook we overcome hardship and misery
The Innovation Journal
Collectivism makes the same mistake, only
on a larger scale. For the collectivist, society is nothing but a collection of separately existing, detached individuals (Dirk, 1998).
Ubuntu is neither collectivist (socialist/ communist) nor individualist
(capitalist).
Instead it is collaborationist, relying on a flexible group of people working together towards a shared goal and for their common good. The focus shifts from solitary to solidarity, from
September 2012 | Management Today 7
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