How Personal Disruptive Innovation Fuels Critical Thinking to Keep Up with AI, Future-Proof Careers, and Adapt to Unpredictable Circumstances
“Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming industries, enhancing efficiency and productivity, and pushing the possible limits. As a result, the job market is evolving, and while some jobs will become automated, new opportunities will arise. The future of work will involve humans collaborating with AI to accomplish tasks more efficiently and productively. Therefore, organizations must reskill and upskill their workforce to ensure individuals possess the necessary abilities to thrive in this AI-driven future. Personal Disruptive Innovation is essential in developing authenticity, integrity, empathy, and critical thinking skills to keep up with AI and adapt to unpredictable circumstances. This will future-proof our careers and allow us to thrive.”– Hubert Rampersad.
“AI excels at imitation but not innovation. Current AI systems like ChatGPT are trained on large datasets of human-generated text and images, allowing them to summarize existing knowledge smartly. However, unlike humans, they struggle to innovate on these ideas. This is because they lack the creativity and intuition that humans possess, allowing us to think outside the box and develop new and innovative ideas. Perhaps one day, AI systems will be able to innovate just as well as humans can.”—Hubert Rampersad
Generative AI
We are experiencing rapid innovation in AI and automation, which is expected to significantly impact the future of jobs and productivity. The emergence of generative AI has brought about significant changes across various fields, including innovation, revolutionizing manufacturing processes, and developing more intelligent AI agents. Generative AI uses unsupervised learning algorithms to analyze the patterns and structures within the training data and produce realistic content that shares characteristics with the original input data. However, it is essential to note that generative AI can inherit and perpetuate biases in training data, propagate hate speech and false information, and even generate content that could potentially raise copyright issues. ChatGPT has proven to be a racist. Therefore, it is crucial to use generative AI responsibly and with caution.
Job market
According to a Massachusetts Institute of Technology study, AI-powered worker productivity could increase by as much as 4x by 2030. The study showed that workers using AI, particularly ChatGPT, experienced a remarkable 37% improvement in productivity. Experts at the AI Decoded panel emphasize that the partnership between humans and machines will lead to innovation and progress. Rather than complete automation, the future of work may involve humans collaborating with AI to accomplish tasks more efficiently. The job market will also evolve. While some jobs may be automated, new opportunities will emerge in AI development, data science, and cybersecurity.
According to the World Economic Forum, technological advancements will create more than 97 million jobs, while 85 million jobs will be displaced. A recent Goldman Sachs study found that generative AI tools could impact 300 million full-time jobs worldwide, leading to a “significant disruption” in the job market. Anu Madgavkar, a partner at the McKinsey Global Institute, suggests that human judgment needs to be applied to these technologies to avoid error and bias. It is important to note that users of ChatGPT have reported that the bot can generate misinformation, incorrectly answer coding problems, and produce errors in basic math.
In the current AI era, job security is a growing concern for many. However, certain professions will always be in demand due to their inherent human-centric nature. These jobs require a human touch that technology can’t replicate. These jobs include healthcare professionals, artists, designers, and other roles requiring creativity and empathy. These jobs will always be in demand.
AI excels at imitation but not innovation.
According to new research at the University of California, Berkeley, while Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems are often portrayed as sentient agents that could potentially surpass human intelligence, they lack the crucial human ability of innovation. AI language models like ChatGPT are trained on large datasets of human-generated text and images, allowing them to summarize existing knowledge smartly. However, unlike humans, AI systems struggle to innovate on these ideas. This is because they lack the creativity and intuition that humans possess, allowing us to think outside the box and develop new and innovative ideas. While AI systems can help generate new ideas based on existing ones, they are not yet capable of true innovation. Researchers are constantly working to improve AI systems and make them more creative and innovative. So, who knows what the future holds? Perhaps one day, AI systems will be able to innovate just as well as humans can. Read this new research article: “Artificial intelligence systems found to excel at imitation, but not innovation” (December 13, 2023).
Reskilling
The rapid advancements in AI technology have brought about a paradigm shift in the labor market. To keep up with the pace of change, organizations must prioritize reskilling and upskilling their workforce. This will help address talent shortages and prepare the workforce for the new emerging roles. Investing in training and upskilling programs is critical to ensure individuals have the necessary skills to thrive in this AI-driven future.
Personal Disruptive Innovation
Personal disruptive innovation is a powerful tool for training, reskilling, and upskilling individuals to prepare them for the age of AI. Leaders should encourage their employees to engage in this learning process and provide support to keep up with AI. This process is about developing human intelligence, empathy, integrity, and critical thinking, which are skills that AI cannot replace. Personal disruptive innovation is a skill set that AI can’t replicate. In this article, we will describe personal disruptive innovation in detail.
Combining personal disruptive innovation with AI can help us generate more imaginative, innovative, empathetic, and disruptive ideas with fewer errors. By embracing personal disruptive innovation, individuals can unlock their creative potential, challenge traditional markets, and make a meaningful impact on society. It’s important to note that while AI is a valuable tool, it cannot replace human intelligence, empathy, and critical thinking. Instead, AI can augment our work and help us generate more imaginative and innovative ideas.
This article explores the concept of personal disruptive innovation, based on my latest
book, “Eco-Design Thinking for Personal, Corporate, and Social Innovation.” In this excerpt, I discussed the concept of reimagining design innovation. Personal disruptive innovation is the future of design thinking. As Einstein famously stated, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” That’s where eco-design thinking emerges, shifting from the traditional fixed mindset to a more dynamic growth mindset. The difference between these two approaches is illustrated in the figure below.
Many individuals tend to favor the left side of their brain and ignore the right, resulting in an imbalance. This can limit their ability to approach complex design issues creatively and authentically. In today’s complex world, sustainable innovation is crucial. Traditional innovation approaches are inadequate because they lack a holistic approach. Instead, they are superficial, theatrical, and cozy. Such policies do not align with my definition of genuine sustainability, which entails a holistic and ethical system that fosters long-term coexistence between humans and nature. This is why I introduced the Eco-Innovation concept.
Sustainable Innovation
Eco-Innovation involves integrating sustainability into the process of innovation. I identify three types of innovation that fall under this category:
- Personal innovation is unlocking your creative potential and creating new opportunities for yourself. By disrupting your current market, you can make a significant social impact. Personal Disruptive Innovation by Hubert Rampersad also helps you find your purpose and improve your business and personal life for greater happiness and health.
- Corporate innovation involves applying new ideas to create new products, processes, or services that increase the value of a company. Corporate innovation also encompasses Open Innovation by Chesbrough, Disruptive Innovation by Clayton Christensen, and BlockChain Innovation.
- Social innovation is developing and implementing new ideas and solutions that meet social needs and strengthen civil society. There is some overlap between social innovation and social entrepreneurship. Social innovation aims to improve the world by implementing innovative ideas that create social and environmental change, benefiting many people. Social entrepreneurs seek the most effective ways to achieve their social mission and provide social benefits.
The diagram below shows how personal innovation, corporate innovation, and social innovation are interconnected. Personal innovation is linked to self-learning, corporate innovation is linked to organizational learning, and social innovation is linked to community learning.
Creative Ideas
Traditional design thinking approaches are unsuitable for the AI era. They lack imagination and fail to address the necessity of critical thinking, read my article “The Era of Design Thinking Has Come to an End, Replaced by Eco-Design Thinking”.
Critical thinkers are loners.
As mentioned, AI excels at imitation but not innovation. Current AI systems lack the creativity and intuition that humans possess, allowing us to think outside the box and develop new and innovative ideas. Working alone can be beneficial for creativity and problem-solving. Some of the most innovative ideas have been generated by individuals working independently, such as
Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, Nikola Tesla, and Stephen Hawking. Tesla developed many innovative ideas while working alone for over thirty years. Similarly, Hawking made significant discoveries while confined to his wheelchair, Newton famously discovered gravity in social isolation, and Einstein developed his theory of relativity alone. Remember what Nikola Tesla said: “Being alone is when ideas are born. This is the secret of innovation”. Albert Einstein said almost the same: “Be a loner. That gives you time to wonder, to Search.
For the truth. Have holy curiosity. Make your life worth living”. These critical thinkers could focus on their work without distractions and interruptions, allowing them to succeed. However, it’s important to note that working in a group can also benefit creativity and problem-solving, as it allows for diverse perspectives and collaboration.
Redesign yourself to become an empathic, disruptive critical thinker.
To become an empathic, disruptive, and critical thinker, you must understand, explore, redefine, and redesign yourself. In the upcoming section, I will discuss the concept of personal disruptive innovation, which can help you interact with AI more effectively. Personal disruptive innovation is an approach that can unlock your creative potential, open up new and unique opportunities, challenge traditional markets, and allow you to make a meaningful impact on society. You can break free from conventional thinking and expand your horizons by embracing innovation. In this way, you will not think outside the box; you will think like there is no box. This approach can help you become more resilient and develop critical thinking skills. The concept of critical thinking is based on my personal disruptive innovation method, which is described in the next section. Personal disruptive innovation is a part of my holistic eco-innovation model, which is shown below. Read “The Future of Innovation”.
Personal Disruptive Innovation: the Ultimate Critical Thinking Roadmap
Personal Disruptive Innovation is the authenticity, integrity, empathy, and critical thinking roadmap that will help you unlock your creative potential by cultivating a solid growth, ethical and critical thinking mindset, creating new and unique opportunities, and disrupting your current target market. This model involves the following five steps: 1. Personal Ambition, 2. Personal Brand, 3. Personal Innovation Strategy, 4. Implementation, and 5. Personal Integrity & Empathy. This model is illustrated below:
This personal disruptive innovation model will help you develop visionary, imaginative, and empathetic thinking. Instead of thinking outside the box, you’ll think like there is no box. The key is to develop self-knowledge and self-learning to drive personal innovation, which can help you become more resilient and authentic and sharpen your authenticity, integrity, empathy, and critical thinking skills. Remember that without self-knowledge, personal innovation, a strong mindset, and personal integrity, you won’t be able to succeed as an empathetic and disruptive innovator. This system will unlock your creative potential and imagination while honing your authenticity, integrity, empathy, and critical thinking skills. It will guide your beliefs and actions, helping you discover your purpose in life and leading to a more fulfilling, content, and healthier life, personally and professionally.
Personal disruptive innovation is a system that helps you explore and redesign your life, build resilience, and develop your personal brand. It enables you to define your higher calling and discover your life’s purpose. Elon Musk once said: “Attach yourself to a mission, a calling, a purpose only. That’s how you keep power and your peace. It worked pretty well for me this far”. You can become a visionary, imaginative, and empathetic individual using the personal disruptive innovation model. This involves using self-learning to translate your self-knowledge into personal innovation and to develop skills such as resilience, authenticity, integrity, strategic thinking, and critical thinking, which are crucial in the AI era. This system will also help unleash your creative potential and imagination and will help you skillfully analyze information from observation, experience, reflection, and reasoning.
The personal disruptive innovation model consists of the following five phases:
1. Personal Ambition: The initial step involves engaging in a reflective process that includes deep thinking, introspection, and self-reflection. This will also strengthen your critical thinking skills. During this phase, you’ll be introduced to breathing and silence exercises that will aid in developing self-awareness. Self-knowledge is the ultimate goal of this phase. The outcome of this phase will be the creation of your personal mission, vision, and key roles, as illustrated in the diagram below. Through this process, you’ll gain insights into your life and acquire self-knowledge, self-awareness, and self-regulation, which are the building blocks of authenticity, empathy, trustworthiness, integrity, creativity, imagination, and critical thinking. Your personal ambition statement also serves as the foundation of an innovative, creative, imaginative mindset. The figure below shows my personal ambition framework.
Spirituality can play a vital role in eco-design thinking and innovation. It provides the intuition needed to make tough decisions and develop a higher level of consciousness. Elon Musk once said, “We should aspire to increase the scope and scale of human consciousness to understand better what questions to ask. The only thing that makes sense
It is to strive for greater collective enlightenment.” By focusing inwardly and reflecting on your actions through self-examination with breathing and silence exercises, you can gain insights about yourself and your life’s purpose. This is what Einstein wanted to know.
You will also find out why you were born. This process will help you learn more about yourself and discover the truth about your life’s purpose. As Thomas Huxley said, “Learn what is true to do what is right.” This process enables you to learn more and discover the truth about yourself. By formulating personal ambition, you can initiate self-examination and prepare your mindset for critical thinking. As you
become more conscious of yourself, gain more creativity, and become a critical thinker. The thinking process and mindset changes are meant to prepare you for action as a proactive, empathic, and ethical critical thinker. Based on insights acquired through this process, you will also become more self-assured and work smarter through self-learning and self-knowledge. You become more creative and innovative as you grow more conscious of yourself. The words of Galileo Galilei may also be
recalled here—“You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him discover it in himself.” Remember, the more you want to be innovative, the more you should develop self-knowledge. Read “How Mindful Meditation Boosts Critical Thinking in the Age of AI.”
By practicing breathing and silence exercises, you can better connect with your inner voice and find answers to the questions you seek. This requires tuning into the same wavelength as your spirit, which is closely linked to the concept of synchronicity. Synchronicity refers to meaningful coincidences or events that co-occur without apparent.
Cause. It is the connection between the ‘inner world’ and the ‘outer world’; consciousness bridges these two dimensions. Synchronicity can manifest in many ways, and it is a phenomenon studied by psychologists such as Carl Gustav Jung and Nikola Tesla, who were also in sync with the universe. I am also acting like a receiver and tuned to the same frequency.
Your personal ambition comprises your mission, vision, and key roles. You can click on this link to view my personal ambition statement. Having a clear purpose is crucial to becoming a visionary. Elon Musk’s vision is to contribute to the world’s shift from fossil fuels to sustainable energy sources. According to Musk, the thing that drives him is vision. He said, “I think having an inspiring and appealing future is important. There must be reasons you get up in the morning and want to live. Why do you want to live? What’s the point? What inspires you? What do you love about the future?” Elon Musk’s vision is to create an inspiring and appealing future for humanity.
2. Personal Brand: In this phase, you will define and formulate an authentic, distinctive, memorable personal brand promise to strengthen your authenticity, integrity, empathy, and critical thinking skills. This brand promise will be the focal point of your storytelling throughout each stage of my new proposed design process and your interaction with AI. Storytelling is an essential tool that can be used to engage with customers at different stages of the design process. Take the time to create your brand statement, ensuring it aligns with your ambition. Then, craft a compelling brand story to promote the brand called “You.” Elon Musk is an excellent example of a powerful personal brand and a brilliant storyteller. He emotionally connects with his audience by sharing his vision and passion for innovation. ChatGPT can assist you in creating compelling brand stories that resonate with your audience and convey your brand message effectively. This figure shows the seven steps to develop your authentic personal brand, which will strengthen your critical thinking skills. Following these steps, you can create a personal brand that reflects your values, strengths, and aspirations and helps you stand out in a crowded market. Please click on this link to view my personal brand statement. 
3. Personal innovation strategy: To bring your personal ambition to life, it’s crucial to act. This means creating a well-rounded action plan or personal innovation strategy based on your mission, vision, and key roles. A personal innovation strategy includes a roadmap to help you develop a stronger mindset and authenticity, integrity, empathy, and critical thinking skills. Without continuous improvement based on your personal innovation strategy, you won’t be able to assist AI effectively, and this will not lead to your long-term growth and success. The following are the five steps to develop your personal innovation strategy:
Your personal critical success factors are the key elements of your ambition and objectives. These factors are broken down into four perspectives: internal, external, knowledge and learning, and financial. Your personal innovation strategy helps you turn your personal ambition into manageable, measurable objectives and milestones in a balanced way. Using this strategy, you can effectively manage your time and become more disciplined, proactive, innovative, and empathetic. If you want to learn more about this personal innovation strategy system, I recommend reading my article
“How to Redesign Your Life Based on Your Personal Innovation Strategy.” This article provides valuable insights on how to stay on track and avoid becoming obsolete. It’s an excellent resource for anyone who wants to become a disruptor like Elon Musk. Please click on this link to view my personal innovation strategy.
4. Implementation: Once you have established your personal innovation strategy, it is essential to consistently implement, maintain, and cultivate it to effectively manage and challenge yourself in your personal and business life. To aid you in this process, I recommend following the PDAC cycle (Plan-Deploy-Act-Challenge), which is a continuous improvement cycle that will help your personal innovation strategy effectively, as illustrated in this diagram:
Implementing your personal innovation strategy through the PDAC cycle will lead to self-awareness, happiness, personal disruption, and enhanced authenticity, integrity, empathy, and critical thinking skills. It’s important to regularly update your personal innovation
strategy and repeat the cycle to stay current with new challenges and lessons learned. Continuous self-improvement is necessary to become a successful eco-design thinker like Elon Musk. These 50 tips will assist you in implementing your personal innovation strategy effectively.
5. Personal integrity & empathy: In this age of AI, it is essential to have personal integrity and empathy to assist generative AI systems effectively. Generative AI systems like ChatGPT have been known to inherit and perpetuate biases in training data, propagate hate speech and false information, and even generate content that could potentially raise copyright issues. To avoid these issues, it is crucial to reskill and upskill users to enhance their integrity and empathy skills. By demonstrating personal integrity, users can positively impact their relationships with AI and foster empathetic behavior. This figure illustrates this personal integrity concept:
AI users must balance their personal ambition with their current behavior and actions to develop personal integrity and empathy. Finding a balance between personal ambition and actions is crucial to achieving sustained personal integrity and empathy. During this alignment process, it is essential to reflect honestly on the following questions: What are my personal values, and how do they align with my actions? How can I ensure that my actions are consistent with my values? What are the potential consequences of my actions toward others? How can I empathize with others and understand their perspectives? Am I staying true to my values and conscience in my actions? Are my thoughts and actions aligned consistently? How do my values and intentions relate to my current behavior? Is there congruity between my thoughts and my actions? Am I always acting according to my personal ambition and empathetic nature? Does my personal ambition reflect my desire to work with ethics and empathy? Are there any discrepancies between my personal ambition and my empathetic actions? Do I keep the promises I make to myself? How do others perceive me and my values? Do they see me as someone who stays true to my core beliefs and remains authentic to myself?
To enhance empathy and personal integrity, aligning your personal ambition with your behavior is essential. This involves achieving more excellent compatibility between the two elements so that they are in harmony, as shown below. When your personal ambition and behavior match, you can work authentically and purposefully toward using AI systems without any internal conflicts. This will lead to greater empathy, enhanced charisma, transparency, and trustworthiness.
It is essential to ensure harmony between your personal ambition/brand and your actions to align your deeds with your conscience. Our conscience is the inner voice that guides us to distinguish between right and wrong, fact and fiction. By listening to this voice, we can gain better insight into our empathic behavior, strengths, and weaknesses, ultimately impacting our solidarity with others. Albert Schweitzer once said: “The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity and empathy with other human beings.”
It takes constant awareness of how our actions affect other people, animals, plants, and the environment to achieve a balance between personal ambition and behavior. This entails encouraging social innovation and exercising social responsibility. Our ethical and compassionate conduct improves as we become more aware while our conceit and haughtiness diminish. In addition to offering a breathing and silent exercise, my book can encourage this attentiveness by having readers consider how their conduct and personal aspirations align. By doing this, we may improve and establish a solid personal brand. We must question ourselves honestly: Have I always acted by my conscience? Have I always done what was right? Have I always acted morally as an AI user? Have I acted compassionately regularly? Remember: “Personal integrity and honesty are two important values to uphold in the AI industry, but they differ. Honesty is about telling the truth to others, while personal integrity is about being truthful to yourself and staying true to your values and principles. It’s important to be honest with others, but it’s more important to be honest with yourself and live your life by your beliefs and values,” — Hubert Rampersad
Human-Centered AI Governance
AI applications can potentially revolutionize various industries but pose significant risks. These risks include a lack of AI transparency, bias and discrimination, privacy concerns, and liability for damages caused by AI systems. The rapid adoption of AI systems in various industries has raised concerns about AI ethics, transparency, and regulation compliance. To address these concerns, it is essential to establish AI governance holistically with clear ethical guidelines and regulations that ensure accountability and transparency in AI systems and govern AI’s use in various industries, striking a balance between AI and human values. It is important to acknowledge that governing AI cannot solely rely on formal policies, procedures, guidelines, and rules that dictate AI research, development, and deployment. To maintain ethical resonance with the audience, decency, empathy, and personal integrity must be incorporated into a continuous learning process and ethical culture. These values should be instilled in AI leaders, developers, and users and cultivated from within. The higher their personal integrity, attentiveness, and empathic skills, the more sustainable AI will be.
To address the shortcomings mentioned above, I am launching a unique human-centered AI governance concept that authentically and holistically involves the human perspective in all aspects of good AI governance, embedded in a continuous learning process and ethical culture, to resonate more ethically with the audience. Human-centered AI governance is a holistic framework for embedding ethics into sustainable AI by linking personal integrity, personal governance, and AI governance, as this Figure indicates.
The diagram shows how personal integrity, personal governance, and AI governance are interconnected. Personal integrity is linked to responsible, trustworthy, and ethical people, personal governance is linked to smart critical thinkers and disruptors, and AI governance is linked to responsible, trustworthy, and sustainable AI systems. …. read further “Human-Centered AI Governance: A Holistic Framework for Building an Ethical Culture and Embedding Ethics into Human-Centered AI”.
Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D.
To gain more knowledge about this subject, you may consider attending his Orlando-Tampa Live Events:
Purpose-Driven and Human-Centered AI
Cultivating Authenticity, Integrity, Empathy, and Critical Thinking in the Age of AI.
How Sustainability and Generative AI Fuel Design Innovation.
We also offer the Certified Authentic AI Leadership Coaching program. This program is appropriate for AI leaders, managers, and professionals who wish to strengthen their ethical leadership and critical thinking skills, to drive their purpose and human-centeredness, and to coach others to realize the same.
Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D., founded the Center of Excellence in Human-Centered and Purpose-Driven AI Innovation in Orlando. He is a visionary leader in innovative solutions for genuine sustainability, disruptive design innovation, critical thinking in the age of AI, human-centered and purpose driven AI, and entrepreneurial leadership. He holds a Ph.D. in Innovation Sciences, an MSc in Technology Engineering & Robotics, and a BSc in Mechanical Engineering from leading accredited universities in the Netherlands (Delft University of Technology, Eindhoven University of Technology). He is a well-known futurist, advocating for genuine sustainability on a global scale. With extensive knowledge and expertise, he has authored 25 books on the topics above in many languages and is highly regarded for his insights in these fields. One of his books, “Total Performance Scorecard,” has been published in 20 languages. Dorothy Leonard, an innovation professor at Harvard Business School, wrote the book’s foreword. Rampersad has also previously served as a guest lecturer at MIT Sloan and was featured in BusinessWeek. He was a senior design innovation coach at ASML (the Most Important Tech Company in the World).
Orlando, Florida | tpsi@live.com | Phone/whatsapp: +13053992116 | skype: h.rampersad |
designthinkingink.wordpress.com 