How Visionary Tech Leaders Identified and Achieved Their Big Dreams

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D.  

“We all have something meaningful to contribute to this world. Get out of your lazy chair, take the initiative and responsibility to find out what this is, and keep it at the forefront of your mind each day. The visionary tech leaders mentioned in this article have proven that if someone has an authentic dream, responds to it with love and passion, dares to pursue it, has confidence in himself, and lives by his dream, this dream will guide that person’s life, resulting in purposeful and determined actions. By discovering and formulating your higher self, you become a visionary and realize you have something unique to offer. Your job is to find out what that is and work passionately toward it. Once you better understand who you are, what your purpose is, what your genius and unique talents are, what you stand for, and what your long-term intentions are, it will be much easier to channel your energy in the right direction, to achieve your dreams which is worthy of your effort. Dream it, hope it, believe it, capture it in your mind, visualize it, accept it, respond to it with love, passion, and integrity, work hard on it, and you will achieve it.” —Hubert Rampersad.

Through their remarkable achievements, some influential visionary tech leaders have identified and realized their big dreams. This article delves into their journey, aiming to inspire and guide you on your path to success. This roadmap is based on my book “Eco-Design Thinking for Personal, Corporate, and Social Innovation.” It involves five steps: 1. Personal Ambition, 2. Personal Brand, 3. Personal Innovation Strategy, 4. Implementation, and 5. Personal Integrity & Empathy. All these five steps are needed to become an effective visionary leader. The model is illustrated below:

This holistic blueprint starts with determining who you are at your core authentic self, including your life philosophy, dreams, vision, mission, values, identity, self-knowledge, and self-awareness. It will also help you unlock your creative potential by cultivating solid growth and an empathic and critical thinking mindset. This system will unlock your imagination while honing your authenticity, integrity, empathy, and critical thinking skills. It will also let you define your higher calling and discover your life’s purpose. Let’s examine the five stages of the model more closely:

1. Personal Ambition: To become a visionary leader, you must engage in a reflective process that includes deep thinking, introspection, and self-reflection. 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 ambition, as illustrated in the diagram below. Please click on this link to view my personal ambition statement.  You will identify your personal ambition statement by answering these questions honestly. Your personal ambition entails your identity (mission) and dream (vision). Your dream is related to a higher calling. All the influential tech leaders mentioned below have/had a higher calling. Everyone has a higher calling, a so-called inner assignment. One must know this higher calling and have the courage to follow it to succeed. By practicing breathing and silence exercises, you can better connect with your inner self and find answers to the questions. This will help you to discover your higher purpose. Having a higher purpose is crucial to becoming a visionary. All the influential tech leaders mentioned below had/have a higher purpose and were/are visionary. Through this process, you’ll cultivate self-knowledge, self-awareness, self-management, and self-learning, which entails a journey toward personal disruptive innovation, as shown in this diagram:

The best ideas come when you are alone. Self-learning – the ability to gather, process, retain, and evaluate knowledge alone — is the foundation of creativity and imagination. Traditional creativity approaches lack imagination because they neglect self-learning and, because of this, fail to address complex problems, read “Why Creativity Sucks“. This process will help you learn more about yourself and discover the truth about your life’s purpose. By formulating personal ambition, you can initiate self-examination and prepare your mindset for critical thinking. As you become more conscious of yourself, you gain more creativity. The thinking process and mindset changes are meant to prepare you for action as a proactive, empathic disruptor.

Vision/dream

Your vision is a description of how you would like to realize your dream in the long term. Once you discover the core of your nature, your higher self, and who you really are, you will find it possible to make every dream come true. In Walt Disney’s words, “All our dreams can come true if we dare to pursue them.” Henry David Thoreau said, “If a man advances confidently in the direction of his dreams to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours……Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.” Ralph Waldo Emerson believed, “Your dream is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.” By discovering and formulating your higher self, you will become visionary, innovative, disruptive, and empathic, unleash your creative potential, and realize you have something unique. Your job is to know what that is and to work at it with passion and love.

Once you better understand who you are, your ability and unique talents, what you stand for, and your long-term intentions, it will be much easier to channel your energy in the right direction to achieve a dream worthy of your effort. To become a visionary, it is your responsibility to identify your dream and to respond to it with love and passion. Read “Personal Disruptive Innovation“. Remember what George Bernard Shaw said, “The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.” Here are some visionary tech leaders who identified and realized their dream successfully:

Nikola Tesla dreamt about a world wireless system. His great dream was to find the means to broadcast electrical power without wires in between. He gave his life to realize his vision, while others made millions with his inventions. In the end, he wound up a penniless and forgotten man.

Henry Ford’s dream was, “I will build a motor car for the great multitude…constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the most straightforward designs that modern engineering can devise …so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one—and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God’s great open spaces.” He was the first to introduce the assembly line in 1914 and mass-produce cars, making them affordable for the general public.

Konosuke Matsushita’s dream was- To balance Western rationalism with the spiritualism of The East. The founder of Panasonic had no money and no real business experience, but he did have drive, imagination, creativity, and ambition. His philosophy was to provide ample consumer goods at the lowest possible prices—without compromising quality and service. He admitted that his futuristic personal vision was the reason for his success— “I have tried to envisage intuitively, rather than analytically, the changes that will occur in our society, and I have tried to create what life will be like in the next century.” 

Akio Morita’s dream was- To change the world’s image of the term “Made in Japan” from one of the shoddy imitations of one of high technology and reliability in miniature packages. His passion was to create something new, so he helped steer Japanese industries toward creating new technologies and introduced various innovative products to the world. The co-founder of the Sony Corporation developed innovative products for people who didn’t even know they wanted the Walkman, Trinitron television, video watchman, compact disc (CD), and much more. With ingenuity in electronics design and cutting-edge business practices, it did not take long to see how or why all his visions became reality.

Steve Jobs’s dream was to change the world. His forward-thinking, innovative approach and out-of-the-box strategies set up Apple for sustained growth and unique product offerings. His vision of putting a computer in the hands of everyday people was big and bold.

Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. His vision was to create a comprehensive collection of information in words, sounds, and images, each discretely identified by UDIs and interconnected by hypertext links. Use the Internet to provide universal access to that information collection. 

Hasso Plattner’s dream was- To change the way companies do business by helping them. run simple. He is the co-founder of SAP and Chairman of the SAP Supervisory Board. He reflected continuously on this vision and spirit he believed in and created. He dared to dream it and was determined to make it a reality. He said, “When we began in 1972, our vision was to build real-time business applications, and we did so in close cooperation with our first customers. Today, SAP continues to be the trusted innovator it was then. We are driving intellectual renewal with breakthrough innovations, and we have also returned to our roots, working closely with customers to make the impossible possible.” In 2005, he donated US$35 million to fund the d.school, officially named “Hasso Plattner Institute of Design” at Stanford.

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?” He also said: “Don’t attach yourself to a person, a place, a company, an organization, or a project. 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”. 

Jeff Bezos’s new dream is “A world with a trillion people living in space.” The Amazon and Blue Origin owner says, ‘A trillion people will live in space, there will be “a thousand Einsteins and a thousand Mozarts” and we’ll develop other planets, leaving Earth a beautiful place.” He disrupted the retail industry by making online shopping fast and convenient and is now taking on traditional retailers with its own brands. His Amazon is the most dominant player in an industry that controls a fundamental part of the world’s digital infrastructure.

Richard Branson realized his lifelong dream with Virgin Galactic spaceflight on July 11, 2021. He is the first of the billionaire space company founders to ride his own spacecraft and fly to space aboard his own ship, an achievement that brings space tourism closer to reality. This is a poem adventurer Branson wrote: “The road to success is paved with tests. So, you’ve got to believe in yourself above the rest. Dream big, and let your passion shine; if you don’t, you won’t end up with a dime. Challenge the status quo, disrupt the market, and say YES! And remember that innovation is an endless quest. Don’t forget to change business for good. If you want to change the world, then you should. If you think with your head and listen to your heart. I promise you’ll get off to a flying start. Make bold moves, but always play fair. Always say please and thank you – it’s cool to care. Do what you love and love what you do. This advice is nothing new. Now, stop worrying about whether your business will be a hit. Rise to the challenge and say ‘screw it, let’s do it!”

These visionary, empathic tech leaders:

• Identified and leveraged their ambitious dream;
• Responded to their dream with love and passion;
• Recognized and identified their purpose and expanded their limits based on this;
• Succeeded by living according to their dream and doing related work they love(d);
• Had/have faith in themselves and the courage to pursue their dream and delivered peak performances.

These visionary tech entrepreneurs are/were imaginative idealists, innovators, disruptors, and creators. They know/knew their abilities, dreams, higher calling, and the meaning of life. They are/were all purpose-driven leaders. Read “6 Steps to Cultivating Purpose-Driven Leadership.”

2. Personal Brand: All mentioned visionary tech leaders are/were strong personal brands. In this phase, you need to define and formulate an authentic, distinctive, memorable personal brand promise that will be the focal point of your storytelling. 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.”  Read here how.  Please click on this link to view my personal brand statement.

3. Personal innovation strategy: All mentioned visionary tech leaders know/knew their personal innovation strategy. To bring your ambition and brand to life, it’s crucial to act. This means creating a well-rounded action plan or innovation strategy based on your ambition. A personal innovation strategy also 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 become a solid personal brand, which will not lead to your long-term growth and success. Read here how.  Please click on this link to view my personal innovation strategy.

4. Implementation: All mentioned visionary tech leaders made their dreams a reality. Once you have established your personal innovation strategy, it is essential to consistently implement, maintain, and cultivate it to effectively manage and challenge yourself. 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, enhanced authenticity, integrity, empathy, and a powerful, authentic personal brand. 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 visionary leader. These 50 tips will assist you in implementing your personal innovation strategy effectively, read “50 Tips For Becoming a Disruptor“.

5. Personal integrity & empathy: All mentioned visionary tech leaders are/were empathic. Empathy starts with personal integrity. Albert Schweitzer once said: “The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity and empathy with other human beings.” You must commit to living and acting according to your ambition and keep your promises.  You should reflect your true self and adhere to a moral and behavioral code set down by your ambition. This means that who you really are, what you care about, and your passions should come out in your personal ambition, and you should act and behave accordingly (you should be yourself) to build trust. Building trust starts with being genuine and authentic to yourself. When people find harmony between their personal ambition and their behavior/actions, they will not conflict with their conscience. Finding a balance between personal ambition and actions is crucial to achieving sustained personal integrity and empathy. Read here how.

Epilogue

We admire the role models mentioned above due to their brilliance, achievements, and success. Success is attainable for anyone; each of us possesses unique capabilities that can make it a reality. It doesn’t come automatically—it’s what you define in your ambitious dream and how you pursue it. To achieve exceptional success, you must have a dream, follow your heart, and love what you do. These role models demonstrate that if someone has a clear, authentic dream and responds to it with love and passion, they can courageously pursue it. Having faith in oneself and living in alignment with that dream leads to purposeful and resolute actions. Take responsibility for developing, implementing, and nurturing your authentic dream, keeping it at the forefront of your mind each day.

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D.

To gain more knowledge about this subject, you may consider attending his Orlando-Tampa Live Events:

Building a Purpose-Driven and Design-Driven Culture in Tech Companies

 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

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D., founded the Center of Excellence in Human-Centered and Purpose-Driven Innovation in Orlando. He is a Dutch-American 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 crucial tech company in the world and “Europe’s most valuable tech firm. “

   

Orlando, Florida |  tpsi@live.com |  Phone/WhatsApp: +13053992116

Cultivating a Purpose-Driven Culture at Universities with Good Character of School Leaders, Faculty, and Students

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D.   

There have been significant protests at universities in the United States and Europe in solidarity with Palestinians and against Israel’s war on Gaza. At Columbia University and the University of Amsterdam, the police conducted a raid, resulting in the arrest of many students. Students at the University of Texas at Austin have also taken part in protests. The protests are not limited to Columbia University and UT Austin. Other American universities, including UCLA, have also seen demonstrations related to the conflict. These protests have drawn national attention and highlight the impact of the ongoing conflict on college campuses across the United States and Europe.

At universities, a deteriorating culture and mismanagement by university boards often occur under the guise of freedom of speech. These institutions prioritize profit over purpose-driven values, allowing anti-western ideologies to infiltrate their campuses. Consequently, academic standards decline and confidence in these universities is low. Moreover, they fail to provide students with character-forming experiences essential for a free and flourishing society. The influence of professors and external factors contributes to the radicalization of students.

Universities should re-embrace the promotion of high values and character, which have waned in recent years. The shift away from these values in higher education has had a direct impact on our society. To address this, universities must actively foster a diverse range of ethical perspectives both inside and outside the classroom. This involves designing curricula that expose students to various topics and viewpoints, as well as hiring professors who encourage critical thinking rather than prescribing specific beliefs. Schools should uphold unwavering academic excellence, with integrity and empathy as foundational principles. Additionally, international programs can broaden students’ horizons and instill humility by exposing them to different cultures. Creating a campus culture that celebrates character development, discipline, mutual respect, and open dialogue is crucial. As a society, we risk decline if we lose our ability to think critically and engage in constructive, civil discussions. Read also “Fostering a Culture of Ethics on Campus, Academic Integrity, and Sustainable Good Governance at American Universities“.

Holistic model for restoring the higher purpose of universities

Universities have failed to restore their higher purpose and to develop good character in their leaders, faculty, and students. In this article, I provide a holistic model to realize this sustainably, as shown in this diagram. It will aid universities and colleges to cultivate a purpose-driven institution sustainably.

This holistic, never-ending, purpose-driven cycle entails six stages:

1. Developing the personal purpose of school leaders, faculty, and students entails the foundation for developing their authenticity, integrity, empathy, emotional intelligence, critical thinking skills, and character. Personal purpose is associated with ethical and emotionally intelligent individuals with a sense of direction.
2. Formulating the personal innovation strategy of school leaders, faculty, and students; this strategy entails a roadmap to translate their personal purpose into measurable actions.
3. Implement and cultivate their personal innovation strategy according to the Plan-Deploy-Act-Challenge cycle to continuously improve and purposely manage themselves.
4. Aligning the personal purpose of school leaders, faculty, and students with their behavior and actions to cultivate their personal integrity and empathy skills;
5. Developing the shared university purpose is about what the university stands for, its reason, and how it benefits society. Shared purpose entails the organization’s soul and joint mission, vision, and core values.
6. Aligning the personal purpose with the shared university purpose creates uniformity of personal and university values. Matching these two purposes is essential for achieving an ethical, cohesive, unified university and a happy, engaged, committed, and passionate workforce. It’s about aligning the objectives of school leaders, faculty, and students with those of the university and fostering mutual value addition.

This model includes several key elements, such as fostering authenticity, integrity, a sense of purpose, and empathy among school leaders, faculty, and students and integrating sustainability into the curriculum. By following this framework, universities can create a culture that benefits their bottom line and contributes to the greater good, and school leaders, faculty, and students will be genuine and true to themselves. Below, I will elaborate on each of the six stages in the model.

Personal Purpose

Having a higher purpose in life means you’re living your values and beliefs. Finding your higher purpose is discovering who you are, what you stand for, what matters to you, and what you can contribute to the world. When someone feels that his life lacks purpose, he may struggle to find motivation and direction. This can lead to a sense of detachment from his values and a lack of inspiration to enrich his life and those around him. Finding motivation and direction can be easier when you have a purpose in life. This will inspire you to become more effective, ethical, and fulfilled. Having a purpose in life will inspire you to discover ways to become more creative, imaginative, and innovative. Life is never richer, fuller, or more rewarding than moving faithfully and persistently toward a compelling purpose. I therefore advise school leaders, faculty, and students to formulate their personal purpose statement. Remember what Elon Musk said: “Don’t even attach yourself to a person, a place, a company, an organization, or a project. 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”.

Your personal purpose entails your identity (mission) and dream (vision). Your dream is related to a higher calling. Everyone has a higher calling, a so-called inner assignment. One must be aware of this higher calling and have the courage to follow it. Once you discover the core of your nature, your higher self, and who you really are, you will find it possible to make every dream come true. By discovering and formulating your higher self, you will become visionary, innovative, disruptive, and empathic, unleash your creative potential, and realize you have something unique. Your job is to know what that is and to work at it with passion and love.

Personal mission is aimed at being, and personal vision is aimed at becoming. Your personal mission inspires you, and your personal vision motivates you. Your mission and vision statement (personal purpose statement) embodies your values. Your personal mission encompasses your philosophy of life and your overall objectives, indicating who you are, the reason for existence, why you are on earth, what your purpose here is, what you stand for, what values you are most committed to, what is decisive for your success, what is your life purpose, what do you live for, what are your core beliefs, what are your deepest aspirations, what makes you happy,  and what do you do that you are most proud of.  Your personal mission is your personal leading light, keeping you steadily in the course of your dream. “Who am I?” is an identity question. It initiates self-examination of your personal identity (the unique position you find yourself in) and a voyage of discovery. My mission is: “Enjoy the freedom to unleash the creative potential in others, especially if this can mean something in their life.”

Your personal vision statement is a description of how you want to realize your dream in the long term. It indicates where you are going, which values, beliefs, and principles guide you on your way, why you are involved in the design industry, what you want to achieve, what you desire for your life, what your long-term intentions are, what talents, skills and experiences you need to add value to your others, where you want to be at the end of your life, what you hope to become, where you would like your life to be headed, the ideal characteristics you want to possess, your perfect job situation, and what you like to be. Ask yourself these questions and answer them honestly. Also, identify the attitudes you need to change and understand how to make your values relevant to others. Your personal vision takes care of the inner guidance and determines your actions to reach the most desired future. It functions as an ethical compass that gives meaning to your life.

Your personal vision gives direction to your mission and efforts. A possible way to formulate your personal vision is by asking yourself where you have added value to others and made a difference. Write them down, develop a list of values that identify who you are, and narrow these to a few of the most important ones. Your values are the principles by which you live your life, affecting how you think, feel, behave, and make decisions. It is about what you believe, what you are willing to do to achieve your mission, what is important to you, what you hold to be true, and what you respect. My vision statement is: “I want to realize my mission in the following ways: Enjoying physical health and being imaginative; being empathic; being creative and innovative; and achieving financial security.” 

Please click on this link to view my personal purpose statement, which also outlines my values and beliefs. You should formulate your personal purpose excitingly and persuasively and make it visible. The biggest problem most people face is writing it down. Take the time to write it down based on your answers to the questions in this framework.

Ask yourself these questions and answer them honestly. By practicing breathing and silence exercises, you can better connect with your inner self and find answers to these questions. This will help you to discover your higher purpose. Read “How Mindful Meditation Boosts Critical Thinking in the Age of AI and “Crafting Your Authentic Personal Brand: A 5-Step Guide”.

Through this process, you’ll cultivate self-knowledge, self-awareness, self-management, and self-learning, which entails a journey toward personal disruptive innovation, as shown in this diagram:

Your purpose is associated with your inner freedom, need, motives, and conscience. You realize your principles through your conscience, which can be effectively rendered through your talents. Thus, you can give direction to your life and create your future through your purpose. Personal purpose is a set of guiding principles that clearly state your dream, where you are going, who you are, what you stand for, what makes you unique, and which key roles you fulfill in life and business. It’s an individualized constitution on which your life and behavior are based. This, in turn, forms the basis for determining your decisions about what you want to achieve and the meaning of your life. Formulating your personal purpose is a spiritual search for your identity and a voyage toward realizing your related dream. It includes a collection of challenges and ethical starting points that form the context for your actions. And the key to action is understanding yourself. Through your personal purpose, you will become a critical thinker and become more creative, proactive, disciplined, empathic, ethical, and responsible for yourself. Your personal purpose allows you to express your ability, dream, intentions, identity, ideals, values, and driving force and gain more insight about yourself. This self-knowledge influences your attitude toward others, empathic behavior, and emotional intelligence.

By formulating your personal purpose, you raise a mirror to yourself and strike a personal note in terms of self-examination. The changes in the thinking process and mindset are meant to prepare you for action, set you in motion, and create inner involvement for the things you love. 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—your real character, inner processes, and driving forces. To fathom your life and get a better self-image and greater self-knowledge, together with challenges, your learning ability gets greater. This leads to inner harmony, the foundation for personal disruptive innovation. Remember, the more innovative you want to be, the more you should develop self-knowledge.

Consciousness

Your personal purpose is related to self-awareness and self-regulation. Self-awareness is recognizing and understanding your strengths, weaknesses, needs, values, ambition, moods, emotions, drives, and their effect on others. Self-regulation is controlling or redirecting disruptive impulses, feelings, and attitudes. Self-awareness and self-regulation impact personal integrity, empathy, self-confidence, trustworthiness, and willingness to learn. It is an inner, spiritual learning process related to emotional and spiritual intelligence. This internal process starts with self-knowledge or knowing, which is necessary to develop a higher level of consciousness. The more conscious you are, the easier it is to find your higher purpose. Conscious people are guided by fundamental principles that serve as a moral compass, shaped over a lifetime of introspection. These principles have personal integrity, honesty, and fairness as their magnetic north and are grounded in consciousness. Remember: “Personal integrity and honesty are two important values to uphold, 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, values, and purpose” — Hubert Rampersad.

Introspection and self-reflection

The biggest hindrance to developing self-knowledge is our own thinking. Most people don’t spend much time thinking about their life. I have introduced a breathing and silence exercise that will assist you in turning your attention inward, give you control over your awareness, let you think deeply, and create an atmosphere in which you can listen attentively to your inner voice. Through the breathing and silence exercise, you will discover your ability and get a better hold on your life as your self-awareness increases. Especially in this age of AI, individuals need to be engaged in deep thinking, introspection, and self-reflection. This will also strengthen their leadership and critical thinking skills. University leaders should coach their faculty, and faculty should coach their students in this process. This will also help them cultivate critical thinking skills. The future of work will involve humans collaborating with AI to accomplish tasks more ethically, efficiently, and productively. Because current AI systems excel at imitation but not innovation.

Personal Innovation Strategy

To bring your purpose alive, you must translate it into measurable actions. School leaders, faculty, and students should formulate their personal innovation strategy to get their personal purpose to life. This is a roadmap to developing a growth mindset, authenticity, integrity, empathy, and critical thinking skills. Without continuous improvement based on your personal innovation strategy, you won’t be successful in life and business. The following are the five steps to develop your personal innovation strategy:

Your personal innovation strategy helps you turn your personal purpose 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. Please click on this link to view my personal innovation strategy. Suppose you want to learn more about this personal innovation strategy system. In that case, I recommend reading my articles “How to Redesign Your Life Based on Your Personal Innovation Strategy” and “Cultivating Critical Thinking in the Age of AI.”

Implementation According to the PDAC Cycle

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 university 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 implement 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 strategy and repeat the cycle to stay current with new challenges and lessons learned. These 50 tips will assist you in implementing your strategy effectively.

Aligning Personal Purpose with Personal Behavior 

The next stage ensures harmony between your purpose and actions, aligning 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.” This diagram illustrates this personal integrity concept.

To enhance empathy and personal integrity, aligning your personal purpose with your behavior is essential. This involves achieving more excellent compatibility between the two elements so that they are in harmony, as shown in the above diagram. When your personal purpose and behavior match, you can work authentically and purposefully without internal conflicts. This will lead to greater empathy, enhanced charisma, transparency, and trustworthiness.

Personal integrity and empathy

I advise school leaders, faculty, and students to balance their personal purpose with their current behavior and actions to develop personal integrity and empathy. During this alignment process, they must 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 efforts 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 purpose reflect my desire to work with ethics and empathy? Are there any discrepancies between my personal purpose and my compassionate 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? They must also ask themselves: Have I always acted by my conscience? Have I always done what was right? Have I always worked morally? Have I performed compassionately regularly?

Shared University Purpose

The shared university purpose statement differs from a personal one, but the fundamental principles remain the same. The shared university purpose entails the university mission, vision, and core values to inspire school leaders, faculty, and students toward a common goal. The mission encompasses the university’s identity, while the vision is its long-term dream, based on several core values used to strengthen the single-mindedness of its people. The related questions are included in this below diagram:

Harvard University’s shared purpose: The university’s mission is to educate the citizens and citizen-leaders for our society through the transformative power of liberal arts and sciences education. The university’s vision is to set the standard for residential liberal arts and sciences education and to create and sustain the conditions that enable all Harvard College students to experience an unparalleled educational journey that is intellectually, socially, and personally transformative. Harvard University aspires to provide education and scholarship of the highest quality — to advance the frontiers of knowledge and to prepare individuals for life, work, and leadership. The university’s values are to be committed to excellence, to be open to new ideas, to be diverse and inclusive, to be respectful of the rights and dignity of others, to be accountable for actions and decisions, and to be committed to positive social change. It is clear that Harvard University has formulated an excellent higher purpose statement but is not living its values and beliefs.

Aligning Personal Purpose with Shared University Purpose

Aligning personal purpose with shared university purpose creates uniformity of personal and organizational values. Matching these two purposes involves reaching a higher compatibility between personal and university objectives and mutual value addition. To foster better ethics in the organization and become a purpose-driven university, I encourage school leaders, faculty, and students to formulate their personal purpose and reflect on aligning their personal purpose with the shared university purpose, as shown in this Figure. This will help them to find their higher purpose and cultivate a good character.

School leaders must communicate their personal purpose to their faculty and coach them in this alignment process. Faculty should do the same with their students. By unifying the shared university purpose with their personal purpose, you will create a strong foundation of peace, integrity, engagement, and learning upon which creativity, productivity, and growth can flourish, and life within the university will become a more harmonious and ethical culture. This will catalyze innovation by encouraging a learning culture of curiosity and exploration in the organization. This process is about getting the optimal fit and balance between these activities to enhance productivity, create a climate of trust, and cultivate a purpose-driven university. This process is needed because school leaders, faculty, and students don’t work, study passionately, or expend energy on something they do not believe in or agree with. If there is an effective match between their interests and those of the university, and if their values and the institution’s values align, they will be actively engaged and motivated. This will create trust, and they will work with outstanding commitment and dedication toward realizing the university’s objectives. When their personal purpose is in harmony with the shared purpose (are compatible) and combined in the best interest of both parties, the results will be the good character of school leaders, faculty, and students, restoration of their higher purpose, trust, engagement, collective sense of belonging, and cultivation of innovation and sustainability. In this way, they are stimulated to commit, act ethically, and focus on those activities that create value for the university, themselves, and others.

Purpose Meeting

I recommend introducing a purpose meeting between school leaders and their faculty and between faculty and their students to build a sustainable higher-purpose culture. This meeting is a periodical, informal, voluntary, trusted, and confidential meeting of half an hour between the parties, aligning the personal purpose with the shared purpose as a topic. The purpose meeting also includes individual coaching. It is recommended to be held structurally at least once every two months. The leader plays a crucial role in this process. He/she should be an empathetic, trusted leader, coach, mentor, and role model. This approach fosters ethical awareness among school leaders, faculty, and students, creating a purpose-driven university. When they see their efforts as part of a greater purpose, they will be more likely to invest their creativity, passion, and energy into their work and work smarter.

A study by Towers Perrin found that instead of matching the right employee to the correct position for long-term success, most US organizations and human resource departments emphasize simply filling the job as quickly as possible. As a result, American organizations are losing money as fast as they lose employees. Getting the optimal fit between personal and shared purpose has become necessary to enhance workforce productivity and stimulate creativity, learning, engagement, commitment, and passion.

Redefining American Higher Education

Instead of creating a purpose-driven university, American universities and colleges focus on corrupt DEI policies. Read “Reimagining DEI” and“How to Measure and Fix DEI”.

DEI at American universities and colleges does not actually promote inclusivity. It is the opposite of diversity of thought. Students are classified into groups based on their race and heritage. DEI is being used as a cover to justify discrimination. Jews are considered “oppressors” by the DEI system, so the discrimination they face is somehow justified by its believers. This kind of ideology at American universities and colleges needs to be eliminated. Instead of creating an ethical culture of sustainable good governance, incorporating decency, empathy, and personal integrity into the daily lives of school leaders, faculty, and students, American universities and colleges focus solely on formal rules, regulations, guidelines, and race theater. Read “Things About Sustainability, Innovation, and Creativity You Don’t Learn at Universities.“

Read “How STEM Education is Failing in the Age of AI’.

Purpose-driven University

Developing a purpose-driven university requires constant reinforcement of the two discussed alignment processes, as shown in the holistic purpose-driven university model. This benefits society and contributes to the betterment of humanity. To maintain ethical resonance with the audience and to transform society for the better, decency, empathy, personal integrity, and higher purpose must be incorporated into a continuous learning process and ethical culture at American universities. These values should be instilled in all school leaders, faculty members, and students and cultivated from within. The higher their personal integrity, attentiveness, and empathic skills, the more purpose-driven the university will be.

The effective combination of all six phases in the purpose-driven university model fosters a culture of sustainable innovation, belonging, engagement, personal integrity, transparency, and accountability. Based on this never-ending continuous improvement cycle, American universities and colleges will restore the purpose of higher education, which is to form high students’ character sustainably. Read also: “Sustainable Innovation Fueled by Purpose-Driven Culture.”

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D.

If you’re interested in gaining more knowledge about this program, you may want to consider joining our Orlando–Tampa Live Events:

How to Restore the Higher Purpose of American Higher Education

How to Measure and Fix DEI

Cultivating Authenticity, Integrity, Empathy, and Critical Thinking in the Age of AI

 Purpose-Driven and Human-Centered AI 

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 and “Europe’s most valuable tech firm“.

   

Orlando, Florida |  tpsi@live.com |  Phone/WhatsApp: +13053992116 

6 Steps to Cultivating Purpose-Driven Leadership

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D.

Purpose-driven leaders have a higher purpose in life. Rather than solely focusing on self-interest, purpose-driven leaders consider the greater good of the community, society, and the planet. They live their values and beliefs, pursue their higher calling, know what they can contribute to the world, and move faithfully and persistently toward a compelling purpose. They help their employees find personal meaning in their work and foster a happy workforce that thrives on shared values. They create a shared sense of direction, alignment, and commitment, fostering innovation, greater performance, and belonging in the organization. They also cultivate alignment of the personal purpose of their employees with the shared company purpose to create uniformity of personal and organizational values. In this way, they foster better ethics in the organization to become a purpose-driven company by encouraging their employees to formulate their personal purpose and reflect on aligning their personal purpose with the shared company purpose to help them find their higher purpose and cultivate a good character. In this way, they create sustainable organizations that can succeed in the long term without exploiting scarce resources in the short term.

A Holistic Framework for Cultivating Purpose-Driven Leadership

In this article, I propose a holistic framework for cultivating purpose-driven leadership that fosters sustainable innovation, as shown in below diagram. The framework includes several key elements, such as fostering authenticity, integrity, and a sense of purpose and empathy among leaders and employees, cultivating sustainable innovation, and integrating sustainability into the company’s business activities. By following this framework, companies can create a culture that benefits their bottom line and contributes to the greater good and leaders and employees in these companies will be genuine and true to themselves.

This model is based on my latest book, “Eco-Design Thinking for Personal, Corporate, and Social Innovation.” It will aid companies to cultivate a purpose-driven culture and create a stable foundation for sustainable innovation. Below, I will elaborate on each of these six stages in the model.

1. Personal Purpose

Having a higher purpose in life means you’re living your values and beliefs. Finding your higher purpose or finding your higher calling is discovering who you are, what you stand for, what matters to you, and what you can contribute to the world. When someone feels that his life lacks purpose, he may struggle to find motivation and direction. This can lead to a sense of detachment from his values and a lack of inspiration to enrich his life and those around him. Finding motivation and direction can be easier when you have a purpose in life. This will inspire you to become more effective, ethical, and fulfilled. Having a purpose in life will inspire you to discover ways to become more creative, imaginative, and innovative. Life is never richer, fuller, or more rewarding than moving faithfully and persistently toward a compelling purpose. Remember what Elon Musk said: “Don’t even attach yourself to a person, a place, a company, an organization, or a project. 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”.

Your personal purpose entails your identity (mission) and dream (vision). Your dream is related to a higher calling. Everyone has a higher calling, a so-called inner assignment. Personal mission is aimed at being, and personal vision is aimed at becoming. Your personal mission inspires you, and your personal vision motivates you. Your mission and vision statement (personal purpose statement) embodies your values. Your personal mission encompasses your philosophy of life and your overall objectives, indicating who you are, the reason for existence, why you are on earth, what your purpose here is, what you stand for, what values you are most committed to, what is decisive for your success, what is your life purpose, what do you live for, what are your core beliefs, what are your deepest aspirations, what makes you happy,  and what do you do that you are most proud of.  Your personal mission is your personal leading light, keeping you steadily in the course of your dream. “Who am I?” is an identity question. It initiates self-examination of your personal identity (the unique position you find yourself in) and a voyage of discovery. My mission is: “Enjoy the freedom to unleash the creative potential in others, especially if this can mean something in their life.”

Your personal vision statement is a description of how you want to realize your dream in the long term. It indicates where you are going, which values, beliefs, and principles guide you on your way, why you are involved in the design industry, what you want to achieve, what you desire for your life, what your long-term intentions are, what talents, skills and experiences you need to add value to your others, where you want to be at the end of your life, what you hope to become, where you would like your life to be headed, the ideal characteristics you want to possess, your perfect job situation, and what you desire to be. Ask yourself these questions and answer them honestly.

By practicing breathing and silence exercises, you can better connect with your inner self and find answers to these questions. This will help you to discover your higher purpose. Please click on this link to view my personal purpose statement. It also entails my values and beliefs. Read “How Mindful Meditation Boosts Critical Thinking in the Age of AI.

Through this process, you’ll cultivate self-knowledge, self-awareness, self-management, and self-learning, which entails a journey toward personal disruptive innovation, as shown in this diagram:

The best ideas come when you are alone. Self-learning – the ability to gather, process, retain, and evaluate knowledge alone — is the foundation of creativity and imagination. Traditional creativity approaches lack imagination because they neglect self-learning and, because of this, fail to address complex problems. They heavily rely on group meetings and, therefore, miss opportunities to develop innovative and imaginative ideas. Nikola Tesla developed many innovative ideas while working alone for over thirty years. Similarly, Stephen Hawking made significant discoveries while confined to his wheelchair, and Isaac Newton famously discovered gravity while in social isolation. Remember Nikola Tesla’s statement: “Being alone is when ideas are born. This is the secret of innovation”.  Albert Einstein said almost the same: “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”.

2. Personal Innovation Strategy

To bring your purpose alive, you must translate it into measurable actions. Leaders and employees should formulate their personal innovation strategy to get their personal purpose to life. This is a roadmap to developing a growth mindset, authenticity, integrity, empathy, and critical thinking skills. Without continuous improvement based on your personal innovation strategy, you won’t be successful in life and business. The following are the five steps to develop your personal innovation strategy:

Your personal innovation strategy helps you turn your personal purpose 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. Please click on this link to view my personal innovation strategy. Suppose you want to learn more about this personal innovation strategy system. In that case, I recommend reading my articles “How to Redesign Your Life Based on Your Personal Innovation Strategy” and “Cultivating Critical Thinking in the Age of AI.”

3. Implementation According to the PDAC Cycle

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 company 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 implement 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. These 50 tips will assist you in implementing your personal innovation strategy effectively.

4. Aligning Personal Purpose with Personal Behavior 

The next stage ensures harmony between your purpose and actions, aligning 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.” This diagram illustrates this personal integrity concept.

“Empathy is the key to innovate sustainably. Personal integrity is the foundation of empathy. The higher one’s personal integrity, the more empathetic he becomes. This leads to sustainable innovations”– Hubert Rampersad.

To enhance empathy and personal integrity, aligning your personal purpose with your behavior is essential. This involves achieving more excellent compatibility between the two elements so that they are in harmony, as shown in the above diagram. When your personal purpose and behavior match, you can work authentically and purposefully without internal conflicts. This will lead to greater empathy, enhanced charisma, transparency, and trustworthiness.

Personal integrity and empathy

I advise leaders and employees to balance their personal purpose with their current behavior and actions to develop personal integrity and empathy. During this alignment process, they must 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 efforts 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 purpose reflect my desire to work with ethics and empathy? Are there any discrepancies between my personal purpose and my compassionate 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? They must also ask themselves: Have I always acted by my conscience? Have I always done what was right? Have I always worked morally? Have I performed compassionately regularly?

5. Shared Company Purpose

The shared company purpose statement differs from a personal one, but the fundamental principles remain the same. The shared company purpose entails the company mission, vision, and core values to inspire leaders and employees toward a common goal. The mission encompasses the company’s identity, while the vision is its long-term dream, based on several core values used to strengthen the single-mindedness of its people. The related questions are included in this below diagram:

Look at SpaceX’s and Tesla Inc.’s shared purpose statement.

6. Aligning Personal Purpose with Shared Company Purpose

Aligning personal purpose with shared company purpose creates uniformity of personal and organizational values. Matching these two purposes involves reaching a higher compatibility between personal and company objectives and mutual value addition. To foster better ethics in the organization and become a purpose-driven company, I encourage leaders and employees to formulate their personal purpose and reflect on aligning their personal purpose with the shared company purpose, as shown in this Figure. This will help them to find their higher purpose and cultivate a good character.

Leaders must communicate their personal purpose to their employees and coach them in this alignment process. By unifying the shared company purpose with their personal purpose, you will create a strong foundation of peace, integrity, engagement, and learning upon which creativity, productivity, and growth can flourish, and life within the company will become a more harmonious and ethical culture. This will catalyze innovation by encouraging a learning culture of curiosity and exploration in the organization. This process is about getting the optimal fit and balance between these activities to enhance productivity, create a climate of trust, and cultivate a purpose-driven tech company. This process is needed because leaders and employees don’t work, study passionately, or expend energy on something they do not believe in or agree with. If there is an effective match between their interests and those of the company, and if their values and the institution’s values align, they will be actively engaged and motivated. This will create trust, and they will work with outstanding commitment and dedication toward realizing the company’s objectives. When their personal purpose is in harmony with the shared purpose (are compatible) and combined in the best interest of both parties, the results will be the good character of leaders and employees, restoration of their higher purpose, trust, engagement, collective sense of belonging, and cultivation of innovation and sustainability. In this way, they are stimulated to commit, act ethically, and focus on those activities that create value for the company, themselves, and others.

Purpose Meeting

I recommend introducing a purpose meeting between leaders and their employees to build a sustainable higher-purpose culture. This meeting is a periodical, informal, voluntary, trusted, and confidential meeting of half an hour between the parties, aligning the personal purpose with the shared purpose as a topic. The purpose meeting also includes individual coaching. It is recommended to be held structurally at least once every two months. The leader plays a crucial role in this process. He/she should be an empathetic, trusted leader, coach, mentor, and role model. This approach fosters ethical awareness among leaders and employees, creating a purpose-driven company. When they see their efforts as part of a greater purpose, they will be more likely to invest their creativity, passion, and energy into their work and work smarter.

A study by Towers Perrin found that instead of matching the right employee to the correct position for long-term success, most US companies and human resource departments emphasize simply filling the job as quickly as possible and on corrupt DEI policies, read “Why DEI Sucks; How to Measure and Fix DEI“. As a result, American companies are losing money as fast as they lose employees. Getting the optimal fit between personal and shared purpose has become necessary to enhance workforce productivity and stimulate creativity, learning, engagement, commitment, and passion.

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D.

If you’re interested in gaining more knowledge about this program, you may want to consider joining our Orlando–Tampa Live Events:

Cultivating a Purpose-Driven Boeing Culture

Cultivating a Purpose-Driven and Design Culture in Tech Companies

How Sustainability and Generative AI Fuel Design Innovation

Cultivating Authenticity, Integrity, Empathy, and Critical Thinking in the Age of AI

 Purpose-Driven and Human-Centered AI 

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D., is a Dutch-American innovation expert who founded the Center of Excellence in Human-Centered and Purpose-Driven 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 and “Europe’s most valuable tech firm“.

Orlando, Florida |  tpsi@live.com |  Phone/WhatsApp: +13053992116 

5 Steps to Unlock Your Creative Potential

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D. 

Creativity is the ability to think about a problem in a new way and use imagination to come up with innovative ideas. Conventional creative processes often fail to ignite the necessary spark of imagination and critical thinking. Interestingly, the best ideas come when you are alone. Regrettably, many organizations prioritize theatrical group brainstorming sessions over genuine sustainable creativity development. It’s important to note that cozy meetings are not essential for generating innovative ideas. Creative potential is the ability to generate innovative ideas and solve problems innovatively.

Holistic model to unlock your creative potential

This article introduces a holistic model to unlock your creative potential and encourage personal growth and unconventional thinking. This model is based on my latest book, “Eco-Design Thinking for Personal, Corporate, and Social Innovation.” It involves 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 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”. Using the personal disruptive innovation model, you can become a visionary, imaginative, and empathetic individual. 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 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. Remember what Elon Musk said: “Don’t even attach yourself to a person, a place, a company, an organization, or a project. 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”.  Your personal ambition statement also serves as the foundation of an innovative, creative, imaginative mindset. The figure below shows the personal ambition framework. Ask yourself these questions and answer them honestly.

By practicing breathing and silence exercises, you can better connect with your inner self and find answers to these questions. This will help you to discover your higher purpose. Through this process, you’ll cultivate self-knowledge, self-awareness, self-management, and self-learning, which entails a journey toward personal disruptive innovation, as shown in this diagram:

The best ideas come when you are alone. Self-learning – the ability to gather, process, retain, and evaluate knowledge alone — is the foundation of creativity and imagination. Traditional creativity approaches lack imagination because they neglect self-learning and, because of this, fail to address complex problems. They heavily rely on group meetings and, therefore, miss opportunities to develop innovative and imaginative ideas. Nikola Tesla developed many innovative ideas while working alone for over thirty years. Similarly, Stephen Hawking made significant discoveries while confined to his wheelchair, and Isaac Newton famously discovered gravity while in social isolation. Remember Nikola Tesla’s statement: “Being alone is when ideas are born. This is the secret of innovation”.  Albert Einstein said almost the same: “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”.

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. 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?”

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. Read also “Crafting Your Authentic Personal Brand: A 5-Step Guide“. 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

Read also “Sustainable Innovation Fueled by Purpose-Driven Culture”.

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D.

To gain more knowledge about this subject, you may consider attending his Orlando-Tampa Live Events:

Building a Purpose-Driven and Design-Driven Culture in Tech Companies

Purpose-Driven and Human-Centered AI

Cultivating Authenticity, Integrity, Empathy, and Critical Thinking in the Age of AI.

Human-Centered AI Governance.

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, drive their purpose and human-centeredness, and coach others to realize the same.

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D., founded the Center of Excellence in Human-Centered and Purpose-Driven Innovation in Orlando. He is a Dutch-American 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 and “Europe’s most valuable tech firm“.

   

Orlando, Florida |  tpsi@live.com |  Phone/WhatsApp: +13053992116

Boeing’s Top 10 Failures

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D.

Boeing lost its way. Other companies should take heed; “It’s become clear that Boeing’s problems run far deeper. They expose decades of American corporate philosophy gone awry. Boeing is a quintessential example of America’s rotting business culture over the past 40 years” (Markets Insider). Boeing focused on pleasing Wall Street because that’s how American executives believe companies should operate. The people who are at the top are there for a reason, and it’s basically to maximize shareholder value. Simply changing CEOs or hiring more engineers won’t make Boeing’s problems go away. The company needs to rethink its very reason for existing and what it should provide to society as an enterprise.  

Boeing’s trajectory has veered off course due to America’s deteriorating business culture, which prioritizes swift profits for shareholders over aircraft safety. This shift was initiated by Jack Welch approximately 40 years ago. The recent Boeing crisis lays bare years of flawed American corporate philosophy centered around shareholder interests. Lopez: “An entire generation of politicians and executives preached the doctrine of efficiency in the name of maximizing profits for shareholders, and we’ve seen the results: stagnant wages, massive inequality, legislators captured by industry lobbyists, and companies that coast on past innovation and financialization because it’s easier than investing in something new. As Boeing has been forced to reckon with the corporate culture it developed over the past 40 years, corporate America has been forced to face the long-term cost of its obsession with shareholder primacy and efficiency.” McGee: “Boeing is vital, but we don’t treat it like it’s vital. We treat it like a casino”. 

Former CEO Jim McNerney systematically promoted non-technical people to executive positions, particularly on the board. Incredibly, the MAX was developed under him and the commercial unit CEO — neither of whom had a technical degree. Former CEO Dave Calhoun, who is also not an engineer, has followed the same path, promoting people with similar financial backgrounds (left brain bookkeepers). This diagram shows Boeing’s top 10 failures.

Boeing’s Top 10 Failures

1. The board consists mainly of incompetent left-brain bookkeepers with no engineering background and no understanding of airline industry safety. How to revive.
2. The board prioritizes maximizing profits for shareholders and speed to meet deadlines over quality and aircraft safety. How to revive.
3. Board members lack a strategic and innovative vision and holistic thinking skills related to the airline industry. How to revive.
4. Safety is not a subject of board discussions; the board does not honestly and transparently address safety concerns and does not practice accountability. How to revive.
5. The company lacks a sustainable, purpose-driven ethical culture. How to revive.
6. The company does not control its supply chain effectively. How to revive.
7. Poor design methodology; non-holistic design approach and non-purpose-driven design culture. How to revive.
8. The company is merely treating the symptoms of the problems rather than addressing the root causes. How to revive.
9. Mental absence of assembly workers due to disengagement leads to a lack of critical thinking skills and many mistakes. How to revive.
10. Mismanagement; poor corporate governance, leadership, quality, and HR systems, outsourcing production of most critical parts, and layoffs of highly experienced engineers. How to revive.

Innovations fail at Boeing due to a lack of anchoring innovations in a purpose-driven corporate culture. The best innovations align with the innovator’s and company’s purpose and generate mutual value for its stakeholders. When innovations resonate with the employee’s and organization’s higher purpose and benefit the company, its employees, and key constituents, they are more likely to succeed and become sustainable. Purpose-driven tech companies are not only focused on profitability but also on making a positive impact on society. Their innovations are sustainable. This appears to be different at Boeing, read my article “How the Boeing 737 Max Incidents Could Have Been Avoided”.

These “10 Ways to Kill Creativity, Sustainability, and Innovation” apply to Boeing.

How to Fix it

In this article, I propose a holistic framework for building a purpose-driven culture at Boeing that fosters sustainable innovation. The framework includes several key elements, such as fostering authenticity, integrity, and a sense of purpose and empathy among leaders and employees, cultivating sustainable innovation, and integrating sustainability into the company’s business activities. By following this framework, Boeing can create a culture that benefits their bottom line and contributes to the greater good and leaders and employees in these companies will be genuine and true to themselves. I also refer to my article “5 Steps to Cultivate Authenticity, Integrity, Empathy, and Critical Thinking in the Age of AI”. All Boeing leaders and employees should follow these 5 steps to cultivate their authenticity, integrity, empathy, and critical thinking skills.

This article is based on my experience as a senior design innovation coach at ASML, the most important tech company in the world and Europe’s most valuable tech firm.

HOLISTIC MODEL FOR BUILDING A PURPOSE-DRIVEN CULTURE AT BOEING

Boeing should not only prioritize profits but also promote high values, high character, and critical thinking among their leaders and employees. This will help them impact our society’s well-being, integrity, and empathy in a positive way. In this article, I provide a holistic model to realize this sustainably, as shown in this diagram. This model is based on my latest book, “Eco-Design Thinking for Personal, Corporate, and Social Innovation.” It will aid Boeing to avoid any new problems by cultivating a purpose-driven culture. Read also “The End of Design Thinking: Cultivating a Purpose-Driven Design Culture to Fix the World”. 

This holistic, never-ending, purpose-driven cycle entails six stages:

1. Developing the personal purpose of leaders and employees at Boeing entails the foundation for cultivating their authenticity, integrity, empathy, emotional intelligence, critical thinking skills, and character. Personal purpose is associated with ethical and emotionally intelligent individuals with a sense of direction. This will help them to work smarter and love their job.
2. Formulating the personal innovation strategy of leaders and employees; this strategy entails a roadmap to translate their personal purpose into measurable actions.
3. Implement and cultivate their personal innovation strategy according to the Plan-Deploy-Act-Challenge cycle to continuously improve and purposely manage themselves to become creative, innovative, smart, and empathic.
4. Aligning the personal purpose of leaders and employees with their behavior and actions to cultivate their personal integrity and empathy skills; Remember: “The higher your personal integrity, the better your attentiveness, the better your empathic skills, the fewer mistakes you make”– Hubert Rampersad
5. Developing the shared company purpose is about what Boeing stands for, its reason, and how it benefits society. Shared purpose entails Boeing’s soul and joint mission, vision, and core values.
6. Aligning the personal purpose with the shared company purpose. This creates uniformity of personal and Boeing values. Matching these two purposes is essential for achieving an ethical, cohesive, unified company and a happy, engaged, committed, and passionate workforce. It’s about aligning the objectives of leaders and employees with those of Boeing, as well as fostering mutual value addition.

Below, I will elaborate on each of these six stages.

Personal Purpose

Having a higher purpose in life means you’re living your values and beliefs. Finding your higher purpose is discovering who you are, what you stand for, what matters to you, and what you can contribute to the world. When someone feels that his life lacks purpose, he may struggle to find motivation and direction. This can lead to a sense of detachment from his values and a lack of inspiration to enrich his life and those around him. Finding motivation and direction can be easier when you have a purpose in life. This will inspire you to become more effective, ethical, and fulfilled. Having a purpose in life will inspire you to discover ways to become more creative, imaginative, and innovative. Life is never richer, fuller, or more rewarding than moving faithfully and persistently toward a compelling purpose. Remember what Elon Musk said: “Don’t even attach yourself to a person, a place, a company, an organization, or a project. 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”.

Your personal purpose entails your identity (mission) and dream (vision). Your dream is related to a higher calling. Everyone has a higher calling, a so-called inner assignment. Personal mission is aimed at being, and personal vision is aimed at becoming. Your personal mission inspires you, and your personal vision motivates you. Your mission and vision statement (personal purpose statement) embodies your values. Your personal mission encompasses your philosophy of life and your overall objectives, indicating who you are, the reason for existence, why you are on earth, what your purpose here is, what you stand for, what values you are most committed to, what is decisive for your success, what is your life purpose, what do you live for, what are your core beliefs, what are your deepest aspirations, what makes you happy,  and what do you do that you are most proud of.  Your personal mission is your personal leading light, keeping you steadily in the course of your dream. “Who am I?” is an identity question. It initiates self-examination of your personal identity (the unique position you find yourself in) and a voyage of discovery. My mission is: “Enjoy the freedom to unleash the creative potential in others, especially if this can mean something in their life.”

Your personal vision statement is a description of how you want to realize your dream in the long term. It indicates where you are going, which values, beliefs, and principles guide you on your way, why you are involved in the design industry, what you want to achieve, what you desire for your life, what your long-term intentions are, what talents, skills and experiences you need to add value to your others, where you want to be at the end of your life, what you hope to become, where you would like your life to be headed, the ideal characteristics you want to possess, your perfect job situation, and what you desire to be. All Boeing leaders and employees should ask themselves these questions and answer them honestly.

By practicing breathing and silence exercises, you can better connect with your inner self and find answers to these questions. This will help you to discover your higher purpose. Please click on this link to view my personal purpose statement. It also entails my values and beliefs. Read further “How Mindful Meditation Boosts Critical Thinking in the Age of AI” and “Crafting Your Authentic Personal Brand: A 5-Step Guide“.

Through this process, you’ll cultivate self-knowledge, self-awareness, self-management, and self-learning, which entails a journey toward personal disruptive innovation, as shown in this diagram:

The best ideas come when you are alone.Self-learning – the ability to gather, process, retain, and evaluate knowledge alone — is the foundation of creativity and imagination. Traditional creativity approaches lack imagination because they neglect self-learning and, because of this, fail to address complex problems. They heavily rely on group meetings and, therefore, miss opportunities to develop innovative and imaginative ideas. Nikola Tesla developed many innovative ideas while working alone for over thirty years. Similarly, Stephen Hawking made significant discoveries while confined to his wheelchair, and Isaac Newton famously discovered gravity while in social isolation. Remember Nikola Tesla’s statement: “Being alone is when ideas are born. This is the secret of innovation”.  Albert Einstein said almost the same: “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”.

Personal Innovation Strategy

To bring your purpose alive, you must translate it into measurable actions. Boeing leaders and employees should formulate their personal innovation strategy to get their personal purpose to life. This is a roadmap to developing a growth mindset, authenticity, integrity, empathy, and critical thinking skills. Without continuous improvement based on your personal innovation strategy, you won’t be successful in life and business. The following are the five steps to develop your personal innovation strategy:

Your personal innovation strategy helps you turn your personal purpose 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. Please click on this link to view my personal innovation strategy. Suppose you want to learn more about this personal innovation strategy system. In that case, I recommend reading my article “How to Redesign Your Life Based on Your Personal Innovation Strategy”.

Implementation According to the PDAC Cycle

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 company 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 implement 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. These 50 tips will assist you in implementing your personal innovation strategy effectively.

Aligning Personal Purpose with Personal Behavior 

The next stage ensures harmony between your purpose and actions, aligning 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.” This diagram illustrates this personal integrity concept.

To enhance empathy and personal integrity, aligning your personal purpose with your behavior is essential. This involves achieving more excellent compatibility between the two elements so that they are in harmony, as shown in the above diagram. When your personal purpose and behavior match, you can work authentically and purposefully without internal conflicts. This will lead to greater empathy, enhanced charisma, transparency, and trustworthiness.

Personal integrity and empathy

I advise Boeing leaders and employees to balance their personal purpose with their current behavior and actions to develop personal integrity and empathy. During this alignment process, they must 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 efforts 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 purpose reflect my desire to work with ethics and empathy? Are there any discrepancies between my personal purpose and my compassionate 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? They must also ask themselves: Have I always acted by my conscience? Have I always done what was right? Have I always worked morally? Have I performed compassionately regularly?

Shared Company Purpose

The shared company purpose statement differs from a personal one, but the fundamental principles remain the same. Boeing purpose entails the company mission, vision, and core values to inspire leaders and employees toward a common goal. The mission encompasses Boeing’s identity, while the vision is its long-term dream, based on several core values used to strengthen the single-mindedness of its people. The related questions are included in this below diagram:

Look at Boeing’s purpose statement:

Boeing mission statement is: “To connect, protect, explore, and inspire the world through aerospace innovation.” Boeing vision statement is “People working together as a global enterprise for aerospace industry leadership.” Boeing core values: “How We Operate; Start with engineering excellence; Be accountable; Apply Lean principles; Eliminate traveled work; Reward predictability and stability”.

Aligning Personal Purpose with Shared Company Purpose

Aligning personal purpose of Boeing leaders and employees with the shared Boeing purpose creates uniformity of personal and organizational values. Matching these two purposes involves reaching a higher compatibility between personal and company objectives and mutual value addition. To foster better ethics within Boeing and become a purpose-driven company, I encourage Boeing leaders and employees to formulate their personal purpose and reflect on aligning their personal purpose with the shared Boeing purpose, as shown in this Figure. This will help them to find their higher purpose and cultivate a good character.

Boeing leaders must communicate their personal purpose to their employees and coach them in this alignment process. By unifying the shared Boeing purpose with their personal purpose, you will create a strong foundation of peace, integrity, engagement, and learning upon which creativity, productivity, and growth can flourish, and life within Boeing will become a more harmonious and ethical culture. This will catalyze innovation by encouraging a learning culture of curiosity and exploration in the organization. This process is about getting the optimal fit and balance between these activities to enhance productivity, create a climate of trust, and cultivate a purpose-driven Boeing. This process is needed because leaders and employees at Boeing don’t work passionately, or expend energy on something they do not believe in or agree with. If there is an effective match between their interests and those of the company, and if their values and the institution’s values align, they will be actively engaged and motivated. This will create trust, and they will work with outstanding commitment and dedication toward realizing Boeing’s objectives. When their personal purpose is in harmony with the shared purpose (are compatible) and combined in the best interest of both parties, the results will be the good character of leaders and employees, restoration of their higher purpose, trust, engagement, collective sense of belonging, and cultivation of innovation and sustainability. In this way, they are stimulated to commit, act ethically, and focus on those activities that create value for Boeing.

Purpose Meeting

I recommend introducing a purpose meeting between Boeing leaders and their employees to build a sustainable higher-purpose culture. This meeting is a periodical, informal, voluntary, trusted, and confidential meeting of half an hour between the parties, aligning the personal purpose with the shared purpose as a topic. The purpose meeting also includes individual coaching. It is recommended to be held structurally at least once every two months. The leader plays a crucial role in this process. He/she should be an empathetic, trusted leader, coach, mentor, and role model. This approach fosters ethical awareness among Boeing leaders and employees, creating a purpose-driven company. When they see their efforts as part of a greater purpose, they will be more likely to invest their creativity, passion, and energy into their work and work smarter.

A study by Towers Perrin found that instead of matching the right employee to the correct position for long-term success, most US companies and human resource departments emphasize simply filling the job as quickly as possible and on corrupt DEI policies, read “Why DEI Sucks; How to Measure and Fix DEI“. As a result, American companies are losing money as fast as they lose employees. Getting the optimal fit between personal and shared purpose has become necessary to enhance workforce productivity and stimulate creativity, learning, engagement, commitment, and passion.

SUSTAINABLE INNOVATION

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. Technology companies should prioritize sustainable innovation as a fundamental capability to achieve sustainable growth and competitive advantage. Unfortunately, there are no real good examples of American tech companies focused on sustainable design innovation. Apple, Google, IBM, Samsung, Uber, Airbnb, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, OceanGate, Tesla, and SpaceX are not design-driven due to their poor design approach they learned at Stanford, MIT, and Harvard. Read my article “Cultivating a Design-Driven Culture in Tech Companies“.

We must develop and implement innovative ideas better, faster, smarter, and sustainably. This is why I introduced the Eco-Innovation concept. 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 helps you find your higher purpose and improve your business and personal life for greater happiness and success. Combining personal disruptive innovation with corporate innovation and social innovation will help you generate more imaginative, innovative, empathetic, and disruptive ideas. “We need to understand that all knowledge starts with self-knowledge, all learning starts with self-learning, all innovation starts with self-innovation (personal innovation), real empathy starts with personal integrity, and without empathy, innovations are not sustainable ”- Hubert Rampersad
• 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, corporate, 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.

Traditional innovation approaches are unsuitable for a sustainable circular economy as they focus on process-driven, analytical thinking, cozy, theatrical meetings, and completing related tasks in a particular order using design tools. These approaches lack imagination and fail to address the larger picture. We must adopt a new design method better suited for sustainable innovation. I have therefore introduced eco-design thinking. This creative process involves empathizing with yourself, the end user, and the environment to generate innovative, imaginative, empathetic, and disruptive design ideas that are better aligned with social innovation. The new model is depicted in the figure below and consists of four stages: Explore, Ideate, Prototype, and Execute. It is an iterative, incremental, cyclic, and concentric process of exploring, ideating, prototyping, and executing (Rampersad, 2023). 

Eco-design thinking is a circular and iterative process that has no endpoint. The model consists of various stages that may form iterative loops and do not need to follow a specific sequence. Every iteration brings forth fresh insights. Eco-design thinking is a continuous and circular process that requires testing and refining your design while empathizing with yourself, the users, and the environment. Unfortunately, Boeing has ignored essential steps in this design model, with all the consequences that entails. Read “How the Boeing 737 Max Incidents Could Have Been Avoided”. Read also “How SDGs, ESG, and Purpose Fuel Design For Sustainability”.

The most important benefits of this new design model are: Before delving into corporate innovation issues, exploring and redesigning your own life to become innovative is essential, which leads to more empathetic, intelligent, and sustainable innovations that are in line with social innovation and the higher purpose of the company and its employees; A high level of personal integrity and a designer’s empathy is necessary to achieve superior design quality; By gradually building and enhancing the product and detecting defects early on, you can achieve better and more sustainable innovation outcomes.

Lopez: “Boeing can become better. The first step is believing that the state of Boeing is not a natural one — that it can be changed with conscious effort. We just have to choose a better way”.

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D.

Complimentary Initial Consultation to Enhance Your Design Process and Boost Design Team Performance

If you’re interested in gaining more knowledge about this program, you may want to consider joining our Orlando–Tampa Live Events:

Cultivating a Purpose-Driven Boeing Culture

Building a Purpose-Driven Design Culture in Tech Companies

How Sustainability and Generative AI Fuel Design Innovation

Cultivating Authenticity, Integrity, Empathy, and Critical Thinking in the Age of AI

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D., is a Dutch-American innovation expert who founded the Center of Excellence in Human-Centered and Purpose-Driven 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 and “Europe’s most valuable tech firm“.

Orlando, Florida |  tpsi@live.com |  Phone/WhatsApp: +13053992116 

The 10 Biggest Stupidities in Boardrooms

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D.

The term “stupidity” seems insulting, but it is not a lack of intelligence or knowledge but an inability to use cognitive skills effectively. Stupidity is a consequence of the inability to be aware of one’s own limitations. Stupid people are ignorant of their own ignorance; they don’t know they’re stupid, and worse, they don’t know they don’t know this. Stupidity in boardrooms is evident from recent research by PwC and The Conference Board into the functioning of the C-suite, among more than 600 C-level executives of listed companies. This study shows that there is a lot of stupidity in the boardroom; an overwhelming majority of directors would prefer to see one or more colleagues leave the boardroom, only 30% are satisfied with the performance of management, and no fewer than 92% of directors believe that one or more senior managers should be replaced. Among CEOs, that share is 62%, a significant increase compared to last year (39%). Read the article “Board Effectiveness: A Survey of the C-Suite”.

Executives also appear skeptical about the overall effectiveness of the board of which they are part; only 30% are positive about performance, one in five thinks the performance is downright poor, and they are very concerned that the boards in their current composition do not have the right qualities to lead companies into the future. The underlying problem, according to the 600 C-level executives, is the inability of the board to adapt and move in a rapidly changing time, with 50% of executives feeling that their board does not sufficiently encourage innovation.

Despite this, many directors have not been replaced; they have been in the boardroom for too long and are too old. Numerous boardrooms are filled with left-brained bookkeepers who are guilty of failed supervision. They are characterized by stupidity, incompetence and a lack of innovative visionary critical thinkers with decisiveness, open growth mindset, creativity, imagination, and empathy. This looks a lot like Boeing.

Boeing

Over the past years, Boeing’s board has systematically appointed only left-brain bookkeepers and friends with a non-technical background to the board. The MAX was developed under the previous CEO, and the Boeing debacle arose during the reign of current CEO Dave Calhoun, neither of whom are engineers. These bookkeepers prioritized maximizing profits for shareholders over aircraft safety. This shift in American business philosophy was initiated 40 years ago by Jack Welch. Many of today’s business problems can be traced back to the legacy of this former GE chairman. Unsurprisingly, CEO compensation increased by 1,322% between 1978 and 2020. I refer to my article “Cultivating a Purpose-Driven Boeing Culture of Sustainable Innovation”.

The ten biggest stupidities in boardrooms

1. Board members do not really care about the organization, are not committed, have no passion for the corporate mission, and are unaware of their responsibilities; it’s mainly about boosting their resumes and egos. How to revive.
2. Board members cannot effectively correct management due to a lack of relevant competencies. How to revive.
3. Board members do not speak out, do not give their own opinions, and do not ask the right questions; they are not decisive and cannot participate assertively in deliberations. How to revive.
4. The board consists mainly of left-brain bookkeepers, and board members are often bookkeeping friends of each other. How to revive.
5. Board members lack a strategic, holistic, and innovative vision and the ability and foresight to think strategically long-term. How to revive.
6. Board members cannot responsibly delegate the achievement of intended results; they practice micromanagement and often select the wrong, incompetent managers from their network. How to revive.
7. Board members are focused mainly on shareholder value; they are not purpose-driven, empathetic, and concerned about financial status only. They have no regard for good governance and serving society. How to revive.
8. Board members are egocentric, not open-minded, already know everything, and do not want to learn; consequently, they are not visionary, creative, innovative, or critical thinkers. They do not understand sustainable innovation, lack emotional intelligence, and do not know how to cultivate a sustainable purpose-driven culture. How to revive.
9. Board members cannot honestly, transparently, with integrity and respect, weigh various value-based policy options and anticipate the consequences. How to revive.
10. The board chairman does not know how to conduct board meetings effectively. This causes board members to wander off, have no agenda, lack clarity about decision-making, have meetings not start and end on time, be cozy, and involve a lot of alcohol. How to revive.

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D.

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D., is a Dutch-American innovation expert who founded the Center of Excellence in Human-Centered and Purpose-Driven 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 and “Europe’s most valuable tech firm“.

Orlando, Florida |  tpsi@live.com |  Phone/WhatsApp: +13053992116 

Orlando–Tampa Event: Cultivating a Purpose-Driven Boeing Culture

Boeing lost its way and needs to rethink its very reason for existing. Innovations fail at Boeing due to a lack of anchoring innovations in a purpose-driven corporate culture. Purpose-driven companies are not only focused on profitability but mainly on making a positive impact on society. Their innovations are sustainable. This appears to be different at Boeing, read my article “How the Boeing 737 Max Incidents Could Have Been Avoided”.  

Keynote: Cultivating a Purpose-Driven Boeing Culture

Speaker: Renowned Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D. | Location: 133 Town Center Blvd, Clermont, Florida 34714, USA  | Target audience: Tech executives, innovation leaders, and design managers only | Prior registration required via tpsi@live.com | Phone/WhatsApp: +13053992116 | Date/Time: To be determined 

Event content and topics to be discussed:

Cultivating a Purpose-Driven Boeing Culture of Sustainable Innovation

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D.

 “The one thing missing from the board of directors of Boeing is a holistic view on cultivating a purpose-driven culture of sustainable Innovation” — Hubert Rampersad

Boeing lost its way. Other companies should take heed; “It’s become clear that Boeing’s problems run far deeper. They expose decades of American corporate philosophy gone awry. Boeing is a quintessential example of America’s rotting business culture over the past 40 years” (Markets Insider). Boeing focused on pleasing Wall Street because that’s how American executives believe companies should operate. The people who are at the top are there for a reason, and it’s basically to maximize shareholder value. Simply changing CEOs or hiring more engineers won’t make Boeing’s problems go away. The company needs to rethink its very reason for existing and what it should provide to society as an enterprise. Lopez: “A good American company isn’t just a vehicle for financial returns; it is first and foremost an employer, a contributor to economic and/or technological innovation, and a source of US power. Whether the recent disasters shake Boeing out of its somnambulance remains unclear. It’s also questionable whether other major companies with a similar maximize-shareholder-value-at-all-costs ethos will learn from the mistakes. But it’s clear that what Boeing — and the entire American corporate body politic — needs is nothing short of a philosophical counterrevolution”. William McGee: “For decades Boeing was the pinnacle of American engineering. It was America’s crown jewel and one of the most important and impressive companies in the US”. In Boeing’s quarterly earnings, President and CEO Dave Calhoun (who was hired after the previous 737 Max disasters) promised more of a focus on quality and encouraged employees to speak up about issues on the factory floor. But the short-sighted Calhoun is putting out fires with his ad-hoc approach. He does not realize that he is only treating the symptoms of the problem and not addressing the root cause. The real root cause is a rotten corporate culture at Boeing which is focused on making shareholders happy instead of focusing on a purpose-driven culture.

Boeing’s trajectory has veered off course due to America’s deteriorating business culture, which prioritizes swift profits for shareholders over aircraft safety. This shift was initiated by Jack Welch approximately 40 years ago. The recent Boeing crisis lays bare years of flawed American corporate philosophy centered around shareholder interests. A significant portion of today’s corporate challenges can be traced back to the legacy of GE’s former chairman, Jack Welch, who was revered by CEOs worldwide. Interestingly, Boeing’s current Chairman, David Calhoun, once served as Welch’s deputy. Calhoun is focused on maximizing profits for his shareholders, just like many CEOs in corporate America. It’s probably no surprise that CEO pay increased by 1,322% from 1978 to 2020.

Lopez: “An entire generation of politicians and executives preached the doctrine of efficiency in the name of maximizing profits for shareholders, and we’ve seen the results: stagnant wages, massive inequality, legislators captured by industry lobbyists, and companies that coast on past innovation and financialization because it’s easier than investing in something new. As Boeing has been forced to reckon with the corporate culture it developed over the past 40 years, corporate America has been forced to face the long-term cost of its obsession with shareholder primacy and efficiency.” McGee: “Boeing is vital, but we don’t treat it like it’s vital. We treat it like a casino”.

Former CEO Jim McNerney systematically promoted non-technical people to executive positions, particularly on the board. Incredibly, the MAX was developed under him and the commercial unit CEO — neither of whom had a technical degree. Former CEO Dave Calhoun, who is also not an engineer, has followed the same path, promoting people with similar financial backgrounds (left brain bookkeepers). The whole board should be fired!

Innovations fail at Boeing due to a lack of anchoring innovations in a purpose-driven corporate culture. The best innovations align with the innovator’s and company’s purpose and generate mutual value for its stakeholders. When innovations resonate with the employee’s and organization’s higher purpose and benefit the company, its employees, and key constituents, they are more likely to succeed and become sustainable. Purpose-driven tech companies are not only focused on profitability but also on making a positive impact on society. Their innovations are sustainable.  ….READ FURTHER.

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D.

To gain more knowledge about this subject, you may consider attending his other Orlando-Tampa Live Events:

Building a Purpose-Driven Design Culture in Tech Companies

Purpose-Driven and Human-Centered AI

Cultivating Authenticity, Integrity, Empathy, and Critical Thinking in the Age of AI.

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D., founded the Center of Excellence in Design-Driven, Human-Centered, and Purpose-Driven Innovation in Orlando, Florida. He is a visionary leader in innovative solutions for genuine sustainability, disruptive design innovation, critical thinking, 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 and “Europe’s most valuable tech firm.

   

Orlando, Florida |  tpsi@live.com |  Phone/WhatsApp: +13053992116

About the speaker: https://bit.ly/2CQLIfS  

Crafting Your Authentic Personal Brand: A 5-Step Guide

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D.  

“We all have something meaningful to contribute to this world. Get out of your lazy chair, take the initiative and responsibility to find out what this is, and keep it at the forefront of your mind each day. I have proven that if someone has an authentic dream, responds to it with love and passion, dares to pursue it, has confidence in himself, and lives by his dream, this dream will guide that person’s life, resulting in purposeful and determined actions. By discovering and formulating your higher self, you become a visionary and realize you have something unique to offer. Your job is to find out what that is and work passionately toward it. Once you better understand who you are, what your genius and unique talents are, what you stand for, what your long-term intentions are, and what type of relationship you would like to have with others, it will be much easier to channel your energy in the right direction, to achieve your dream which is worthy of your effort. Dream it, hope it, believe it, capture it in your mind, visualize it, accept it, respond to it with love, passion, and integrity, work hard on it, and you will achieve it.” —Hubert Rampersad.

Personal branding

Being good and accomplished in your field is not enough. It’s time to make a serious effort to discover your genius, passion, and dream and develop yourself as a robust, consistent, and memorable authentic personal brand. You can shape the market’s perception of your brand by defining your unique strengths, values, and personality and sharing them with others excitingly and persuasively. You can develop and manage it, essential for future employability and success. In this article, I introduce a holistic, authentic personal branding method that is sustainable and goes far beyond traditional personal branding. 

Everyone has a chance and should be responsible for learning, improving, building their skills, and becoming a strong brand. Everyone is a personal brand, but most people are unaware of this and do not manage it strategically and effectively. You should take control of your brand and its message and affect how others perceive you. This will help you to actively grow and distinguish yourself as an exceptional professional. It:

• Stimulates meaningful perceptions about the values and qualities that you stand for
• Tell others who you are, what you do, what makes you different, how you create value for them, and what they can expect when they deal with you
• Influences how others perceive you
• Creates expectations in the minds of others of what they will get when they work with you
• Creates an identity around you, which makes it easier for people to remember who you are.
• Gets your prospects to see you as the only solution to their problem.
• Puts you above the competition and makes you unique and better than your competitors in the marketplace

Your personal brand is the synthesis of all the expectations, images, and perceptions it creates in the minds of others when they see or hear your name. The underlying assumption of the personal branding philosophy is that each of us has unique gifts and a distinct purpose and dream in life. By connecting these gifts, purpose, and dreams, we open ourselves to greater happiness and success.

Authentic personal branding

In this article, I introduce a holistic, authentic personal branding model that will help you unlock your potential and build a trusted image of yourself that you want to project in everything you do. It is harmonious with your values, beliefs, dreams, and genius. When combined with powerful tools, your brand, well-branded according to this approach, will make it easier to convince others, deliver peak performance, and create a stable basis for trustworthiness, credibility, and personal charisma.

This new approach places more emphasis on understanding yourself and the needs of others. Meet those needs while staying true to your values, improve yourself continuously, and realize growth in life based on this personal branding journey. It focuses on the human side of sustainable branding and includes your reputation, character, and personality. If you are well-branded according to this approach, you will find it easier to convince others and attract the people and opportunities that perfectly fit you.

The Authentic Personal Branding Roadmap 

Authentic personal branding is based on my books “Eco-Design Thinking for Personal, Corporate, and Social Innovation” and “Authentic Personal Branding: A New Blueprint for Building and Aligning a Powerful Leadership Brand.” The authentic personal branding model involves 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 authentic personal branding blueprint starts with determining who you are at your core authentic self. Rather than inventing a brand that you would like to be perceived as and to sell yourself to others, this one is based on your life philosophy, dreams, vision, mission, values, key roles, identity, self-knowledge, self-awareness, self-responsibility, positive attributes, and self-management. With an authentic personal brand, your most robust characteristics, traits, and values can separate you from the crowd. Without this, you look just like everyone else. If you are not branded authentically, honestly, and holistically, if you don’t deliver according to your brand promise and focus mainly on selling, packaging, outward appearances, promoting yourself, and becoming famous, you will be perceived as egocentric and selfish. Remember what Albert Einstein said: “Try not to become a man of success but of value.”

This roadmap will also help you unlock your creative potential by cultivating solid growth and an ethical and critical thinking mindset, creating new and unique opportunities, and disrupting your target market. The key is to develop self-knowledge and cultivate self-learning, which will help you become more resilient and authentic and sharpen your authenticity, integrity, empathy, and critical thinking skills. Remember that without self-knowledge, a powerful personal brand, a strong mindset, and personal integrity, you won’t be able to succeed in life and in business. This system will unlock your 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. This authentic personal branding method lets you define your higher calling and discover your life’s purpose. Let’s examine the five stages of the model more closely:

1. Personal Ambition: The initial step involves engaging in a reflective process that includes deep thinking, introspection, and self-reflection. 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. Remember what Elon Musk said: “Don’t even attach yourself to a person, a place, a company, an organization, or a project. 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”.  Your personal ambition statement also serves as the foundation of an innovative, creative, imaginative mindset. The figure below shows the personal ambition framework. Ask yourself these questions and answer them honestly.

By practicing breathing and silence exercises, you can better connect with your inner self and find answers to these questions. This will help you to discover your higher purpose. Through this process, you’ll cultivate self-knowledge, self-awareness, self-management, and self-learning, which entails a journey toward personal disruptive innovation, as shown in this diagram:

The best ideas come when you are alone. Self-learning – the ability to gather, process, retain, and evaluate knowledge alone — is the foundation of creativity and imagination. Traditional creativity approaches lack imagination because they neglect self-learning and, because of this, fail to address complex problems. They heavily rely on group meetings and, therefore, miss opportunities to develop innovative and imaginative ideas. Nikola Tesla developed many innovative ideas while working alone for over thirty years. Similarly, Stephen Hawking made significant discoveries while confined to his wheelchair, and Isaac Newton famously discovered gravity while in social isolation. Remember Nikola Tesla’s statement: “Being alone is when ideas are born. This is the secret of innovation”.  Albert Einstein said almost the same: “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”.

Spirituality plays a vital role in this process. 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, you gain more creativity. The thinking process and mindset changes are meant to prepare you for action as a proactive, empathic, and ethical critical thinker with a powerful personal brand. 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.”  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. Your personal ambition comprises your mission, vision, and key roles. Please 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?”

2. Personal Brand: In this phase, you will define and formulate an authentic, distinctive, memorable personal brand promise that will be the focal point of your storytelling. 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. 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 ambition and brand 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 also 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 become a solid personal brand, which 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 also 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. 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, enhanced authenticity, integrity, empathy, and a powerful, authentic personal brand. 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: You need to commit yourself to live and act according to your personal ambition and to keep promises that you make to yourself.  Personal branding built on the person’s true character is sustainable and robust. You should reflect your true self and adhere to a moral and behavioral code set down by your ambition. This means that who you really are, what you care about, and your passions should come out in your personal ambition, and you should act and behave accordingly (you should be yourself) to build trust. Building trust starts with being genuine and authentic to yourself. When people find harmony between their personal ambition and their behavior/actions, they will not conflict with their conscience. This process will help you to become in harmony with yourself, which is the foundation of integrity, honesty, trustworthiness, credibility, transparency, and charisma. This will help you make a genuine emotional connection with your audience. This figure illustrates this personal integrity concept:
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 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.” 

To achieve a balance between personal ambition and behavior, we must constantly be aware of how our actions affect other people, animals, plants, and the environment. This entails encouraging social innovation and exercising social responsibility. By doing this, you will establish a solid, authentic 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? Have I acted compassionately regularly?

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D.

To gain more knowledge about this subject, you may consider attending his Orlando-Tampa Live Events:

Building a Purpose-Driven and Design-Driven Culture in Tech Companies

Cultivating Authenticity, Integrity, Empathy, and Critical Thinking in the Age of AI.

We also offer the Certified Authentic AI Leadership Coaching program. This program is appropriate for leaders, managers, and professionals who wish to strengthen their ethical leadership and personal brand, drive their purpose, and coach others to realize the same.

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D., founded the Center of Excellence in Human-Centered and Purpose-Driven Innovation in Orlando. He is a Dutch-American 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 crucial tech company in the world and “Europe’s most valuable tech firm. “

   

Orlando, Florida |  tpsi@live.com |  Phone/WhatsApp: +13053992116

Cultivating a Purpose-Driven Boeing Culture of Sustainable Innovation

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D.

“The one thing missing from the board of directors of Boeing is a holistic view on cultivating a purpose-driven culture of sustainable Innovation” — Hubert Rampersad

Boeing lost its way. Other companies should take heed; “It’s become clear that Boeing’s problems run far deeper. They expose decades of American corporate philosophy gone awry. Boeing is a quintessential example of America’s rotting business culture over the past 40 years” (Markets Insider). Boeing focused on pleasing Wall Street because that’s how American executives believe companies should operate. The people who are at the top are there for a reason, and it’s basically to maximize shareholder value. Simply changing CEOs or hiring more engineers won’t make Boeing’s problems go away. The company needs to rethink its very reason for existing and what it should provide to society as an enterprise. Lopez: “A good American company isn’t just a vehicle for financial returns; it is first and foremost an employer, a contributor to economic and/or technological innovation, and a source of US power. Whether the recent disasters shake Boeing out of its somnambulance remains unclear. It’s also questionable whether other major companies with a similar maximize-shareholder-value-at-all-costs ethos will learn from the mistakes. But it’s clear that what Boeing — and the entire American corporate body politic — needs is nothing short of a philosophical counterrevolution”. William McGee: “For decades Boeing was the pinnacle of American engineering. It was America’s crown jewel and one of the most important and impressive companies in the US”. In Boeing’s quarterly earnings, President and CEO Dave Calhoun (who was hired after the previous 737 Max disasters) promised more of a focus on quality and encouraged employees to speak up about issues on the factory floor. But the short-sighted Calhoun is putting out fires with his ad-hoc approach. He does not realize that he is only treating the symptoms of the problem and not addressing the root cause. The real root cause is a rotten corporate culture at Boeing which is focused on making shareholders happy instead of focusing on a purpose-driven culture.

Boeing’s trajectory has veered off course due to America’s deteriorating business culture, which prioritizes swift profits for shareholders over aircraft safety. This shift was initiated by Jack Welch approximately 40 years ago. The recent Boeing crisis lays bare years of flawed American corporate philosophy centered around shareholder interests. A significant portion of today’s corporate challenges can be traced back to the legacy of GE’s former chairman, Jack Welch, who was revered by CEOs worldwide. Interestingly, Boeing’s current Chairman, David Calhoun, once served as Welch’s deputy. Calhoun is focused on maximizing profits for his shareholders, just like many CEOs in corporate America. It’s probably no surprise that CEO pay increased by 1,322% from 1978 to 2020.

Lopez: “An entire generation of politicians and executives preached the doctrine of efficiency in the name of maximizing profits for shareholders, and we’ve seen the results: stagnant wages, massive inequality, legislators captured by industry lobbyists, and companies that coast on past innovation and financialization because it’s easier than investing in something new. As Boeing has been forced to reckon with the corporate culture it developed over the past 40 years, corporate America has been forced to face the long-term cost of its obsession with shareholder primacy and efficiency.” McGee: “Boeing is vital, but we don’t treat it like it’s vital. We treat it like a casino”. 

Former CEO Jim McNerney systematically promoted non-technical people to executive positions, particularly on the board. Incredibly, the MAX was developed under him and the commercial unit CEO — neither of whom had a technical degree. Former CEO Dave Calhoun, who is also not an engineer, has followed the same path, promoting people with similar financial backgrounds (left brain bookkeepers). This diagram shows Boeing’s top 10 failures.

Innovations fail at Boeing due to a lack of anchoring innovations in a purpose-driven corporate culture. The best innovations align with the innovator’s and company’s purpose and generate mutual value for its stakeholders. When innovations resonate with the employee’s and organization’s higher purpose and benefit the company, its employees, and key constituents, they are more likely to succeed and become sustainable. Purpose-driven tech companies are not only focused on profitability but also on making a positive impact on society. Their innovations are sustainable. This appears to be different at Boeing, read my article “How the Boeing 737 Max Incidents Could Have Been Avoided”.

How to Fix It

In this article, I propose a holistic framework for building a purpose-driven culture at Boeing that fosters sustainable innovation. The framework includes several key elements, such as fostering authenticity, integrity, and a sense of purpose and empathy among leaders and employees, cultivating sustainable innovation, and integrating sustainability into the company’s business activities. By following this framework, Boeing can create a culture that benefits their bottom line and contributes to the greater good and leaders and employees in these companies will be genuine and true to themselves. All Boeing leaders and employees should follow the steps to cultivate their authenticity, integrity, empathy, and critical thinking skills. This article is based on my experience as a senior design innovation coach at ASML, the most important tech company in the world and Europe’s most valuable tech firm.

HOLISTIC MODEL FOR BUILDING A PURPOSE-DRIVEN CULTURE AT BOEING

Boeing should not only prioritize profits but also promote high values, high character, and critical thinking among their leaders and employees. This will help them impact our society’s well-being, integrity, and empathy in a positive way. In this article, I provide a holistic model to realize this sustainably, as shown in this diagram. This model is based on my latest book, “Eco-Design Thinking for Personal, Corporate, and Social Innovation.” It will aid Boeing to avoid any new problems by cultivating a purpose-driven culture. Read also “The End of Design Thinking: Cultivating a Purpose-Driven Design Culture to Fix the World”. 

This holistic, never-ending, purpose-driven cycle entails six stages:

1. Developing the personal purpose of leaders and employees at Boeing entails the foundation for cultivating their authenticity, integrity, empathy, emotional intelligence, critical thinking skills, and character. Personal purpose is associated with ethical and emotionally intelligent individuals with a sense of direction. This will help them to work smarter and love their job.
2. Formulating the personal innovation strategy of leaders and employees; this strategy entails a roadmap to translate their personal purpose into measurable actions.
3. Implement and cultivate their personal innovation strategy according to the Plan-Deploy-Act-Challenge cycle to continuously improve and purposely manage themselves to become creative, innovative, smart, and empathic.
4. Aligning the personal purpose of leaders and employees with their behavior and actions to cultivate their personal integrity and empathy skills; Remember: “The higher your personal integrity, the better your attentiveness, the better your empathic skills, the fewer mistakes you make”– Hubert Rampersad
5. Developing the shared company purpose is about what Boeing stands for, its reason, and how it benefits society. Shared purpose entails Boeing’s soul and joint mission, vision, and core values.
6. Aligning the personal purpose with the shared company purpose. This creates uniformity of personal and Boeing values. Matching these two purposes is essential for achieving an ethical, cohesive, unified company and a happy, engaged, committed, and passionate workforce. It’s about aligning the objectives of leaders and employees with those of Boeing, as well as fostering mutual value addition.

Below, I will elaborate on each of these six stages.

Personal Purpose

Having a higher purpose in life means you’re living your values and beliefs. Finding your higher purpose is discovering who you are, what you stand for, what matters to you, and what you can contribute to the world. When someone feels that his life lacks purpose, he may struggle to find motivation and direction. This can lead to a sense of detachment from his values and a lack of inspiration to enrich his life and those around him. Finding motivation and direction can be easier when you have a purpose in life. This will inspire you to become more effective, ethical, and fulfilled. Having a purpose in life will inspire you to discover ways to become more creative, imaginative, and innovative. Life is never richer, fuller, or more rewarding than moving faithfully and persistently toward a compelling purpose. Remember what Elon Musk said: “Don’t even attach yourself to a person, a place, a company, an organization, or a project. 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”.

Your personal purpose entails your identity (mission) and dream (vision). Your dream is related to a higher calling. Everyone has a higher calling, a so-called inner assignment. Personal mission is aimed at being, and personal vision is aimed at becoming. Your personal mission inspires you, and your personal vision motivates you. Your mission and vision statement (personal purpose statement) embodies your values. Your personal mission encompasses your philosophy of life and your overall objectives, indicating who you are, the reason for existence, why you are on earth, what your purpose here is, what you stand for, what values you are most committed to, what is decisive for your success, what is your life purpose, what do you live for, what are your core beliefs, what are your deepest aspirations, what makes you happy,  and what do you do that you are most proud of.  Your personal mission is your personal leading light, keeping you steadily in the course of your dream. “Who am I?” is an identity question. It initiates self-examination of your personal identity (the unique position you find yourself in) and a voyage of discovery. My mission is: “Enjoy the freedom to unleash the creative potential in others, especially if this can mean something in their life.”

Your personal vision statement is a description of how you want to realize your dream in the long term. It indicates where you are going, which values, beliefs, and principles guide you on your way, why you are involved in the design industry, what you want to achieve, what you desire for your life, what your long-term intentions are, what talents, skills and experiences you need to add value to your others, where you want to be at the end of your life, what you hope to become, where you would like your life to be headed, the ideal characteristics you want to possess, your perfect job situation, and what you desire to be. All Boeing leaders and employees should ask themselves these questions and answer them honestly.

By practicing breathing and silence exercises, you can better connect with your inner self and find answers to these questions. This will help you to discover your higher purpose. Please click on this link to view my personal purpose statement. It also entails my values and beliefs. Read further “How Mindful Meditation Boosts Critical Thinking in the Age of AI” and “Crafting Your Authentic Personal Brand: A 5-Step Guide“.

Through this process, you’ll cultivate self-knowledge, self-awareness, self-management, and self-learning, which entails a journey toward personal disruptive innovation, as shown in this diagram:

The best ideas come when you are alone.Self-learning – the ability to gather, process, retain, and evaluate knowledge alone — is the foundation of creativity and imagination. Traditional creativity approaches lack imagination because they neglect self-learning and, because of this, fail to address complex problems. They heavily rely on group meetings and, therefore, miss opportunities to develop innovative and imaginative ideas. Nikola Tesla developed many innovative ideas while working alone for over thirty years. Similarly, Stephen Hawking made significant discoveries while confined to his wheelchair, and Isaac Newton famously discovered gravity while in social isolation. Remember Nikola Tesla’s statement: “Being alone is when ideas are born. This is the secret of innovation”.  Albert Einstein said almost the same: “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”.

Personal Innovation Strategy

To bring your purpose alive, you must translate it into measurable actions. Boeing leaders and employees should formulate their personal innovation strategy to get their personal purpose to life. This is a roadmap to developing a growth mindset, authenticity, integrity, empathy, and critical thinking skills. Without continuous improvement based on your personal innovation strategy, you won’t be successful in life and business. The following are the five steps to develop your personal innovation strategy:

Your personal innovation strategy helps you turn your personal purpose 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. Please click on this link to view my personal innovation strategy. Suppose you want to learn more about this personal innovation strategy system. In that case, I recommend reading my article “How to Redesign Your Life Based on Your Personal Innovation Strategy”.

Implementation According to the PDAC Cycle

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 company 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 implement 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. These 50 tips will assist you in implementing your personal innovation strategy effectively.

Aligning Personal Purpose with Personal Behavior 

The next stage ensures harmony between your purpose and actions, aligning 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.” This diagram illustrates this personal integrity concept.

To enhance empathy and personal integrity, aligning your personal purpose with your behavior is essential. This involves achieving more excellent compatibility between the two elements so that they are in harmony, as shown in the above diagram. When your personal purpose and behavior match, you can work authentically and purposefully without internal conflicts. This will lead to greater empathy, enhanced charisma, transparency, and trustworthiness.

Personal integrity and empathy

I advise Boeing leaders and employees to balance their personal purpose with their current behavior and actions to develop personal integrity and empathy. During this alignment process, they must 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 efforts 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 purpose reflect my desire to work with ethics and empathy? Are there any discrepancies between my personal purpose and my compassionate 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? They must also ask themselves: Have I always acted by my conscience? Have I always done what was right? Have I always worked morally? Have I performed compassionately regularly?

Shared Company Purpose

The shared company purpose statement differs from a personal one, but the fundamental principles remain the same. Boeing purpose entails the company mission, vision, and core values to inspire leaders and employees toward a common goal. The mission encompasses Boeing’s identity, while the vision is its long-term dream, based on several core values used to strengthen the single-mindedness of its people. The related questions are included in this below diagram:

Look at Boeing’s purpose statement:

Boeing mission statement is: “To connect, protect, explore, and inspire the world through aerospace innovation.” Boeing vision statement is “People working together as a global enterprise for aerospace industry leadership.” Boeing core values: “How We Operate; Start with engineering excellence; Be accountable; Apply Lean principles; Eliminate traveled work; Reward predictability and stability”.

Aligning Personal Purpose with Shared Company Purpose

Aligning personal purpose of Boeing leaders and employees with the shared Boeing purpose creates uniformity of personal and organizational values. Matching these two purposes involves reaching a higher compatibility between personal and company objectives and mutual value addition. To foster better ethics within Boeing and become a purpose-driven company, I encourage Boeing leaders and employees to formulate their personal purpose and reflect on aligning their personal purpose with the shared Boeing purpose, as shown in this Figure. This will help them to find their higher purpose and cultivate a good character.

Boeing leaders must communicate their personal purpose to their employees and coach them in this alignment process. By unifying the shared Boeing purpose with their personal purpose, you will create a strong foundation of peace, integrity, engagement, and learning upon which creativity, productivity, and growth can flourish, and life within Boeing will become a more harmonious and ethical culture. This will catalyze innovation by encouraging a learning culture of curiosity and exploration in the organization. This process is about getting the optimal fit and balance between these activities to enhance productivity, create a climate of trust, and cultivate a purpose-driven Boeing. This process is needed because leaders and employees at Boeing don’t work passionately, or expend energy on something they do not believe in or agree with. If there is an effective match between their interests and those of the company, and if their values and the institution’s values align, they will be actively engaged and motivated. This will create trust, and they will work with outstanding commitment and dedication toward realizing Boeing’s objectives. When their personal purpose is in harmony with the shared purpose (are compatible) and combined in the best interest of both parties, the results will be the good character of leaders and employees, restoration of their higher purpose, trust, engagement, collective sense of belonging, and cultivation of innovation and sustainability. In this way, they are stimulated to commit, act ethically, and focus on those activities that create value for Boeing.

Purpose Meeting

I recommend introducing a purpose meeting between Boeing leaders and their employees to build a sustainable higher-purpose culture. This meeting is a periodical, informal, voluntary, trusted, and confidential meeting of half an hour between the parties, aligning the personal purpose with the shared purpose as a topic. The purpose meeting also includes individual coaching. It is recommended to be held structurally at least once every two months. The leader plays a crucial role in this process. He/she should be an empathetic, trusted leader, coach, mentor, and role model. This approach fosters ethical awareness among Boeing leaders and employees, creating a purpose-driven company. When they see their efforts as part of a greater purpose, they will be more likely to invest their creativity, passion, and energy into their work and work smarter.

A study by Towers Perrin found that instead of matching the right employee to the correct position for long-term success, most US companies and human resource departments emphasize simply filling the job as quickly as possible and on corrupt DEI policies, read “Why DEI Sucks; How to Measure and Fix DEI“. As a result, American companies are losing money as fast as they lose employees. Getting the optimal fit between personal and shared purpose has become necessary to enhance workforce productivity and stimulate creativity, learning, engagement, commitment, and passion.

SUSTAINABLE INNOVATION

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. Technology companies should prioritize sustainable innovation as a fundamental capability to achieve sustainable growth and competitive advantage. Unfortunately, there are no real good examples of American tech companies focused on sustainable design innovation. Apple, Google, IBM, Samsung, Uber, Airbnb, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, OceanGate, Tesla, and SpaceX are not design-driven due to their poor design approach they learned at Stanford, MIT, and Harvard. Read my article “Cultivating a Design-Driven Culture in Tech Companies“.

We must develop and implement innovative ideas better, faster, smarter, and sustainably. This is why I introduced the Eco-Innovation concept. 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 helps you find your higher purpose and improve your business and personal life for greater happiness and success. Combining personal disruptive innovation with corporate innovation and social innovation will help you generate more imaginative, innovative, empathetic, and disruptive ideas. “We need to understand that all knowledge starts with self-knowledge, all learning starts with self-learning, all innovation starts with self-innovation (personal innovation), real empathy starts with personal integrity, and without empathy, innovations are not sustainable ”- Hubert Rampersad
• 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, corporate, 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.

Traditional innovation approaches are unsuitable for a sustainable circular economy as they focus on process-driven, analytical thinking, cozy, theatrical meetings, and completing related tasks in a particular order using design tools. These approaches lack imagination and fail to address the larger picture. We must adopt a new design method better suited for sustainable innovation. I have therefore introduced eco-design thinking. This creative process involves empathizing with yourself, the end user, and the environment to generate innovative, imaginative, empathetic, and disruptive design ideas that are better aligned with social innovation. The new model is depicted in the figure below and consists of four stages: Explore, Ideate, Prototype, and Execute. It is an iterative, incremental, cyclic, and concentric process of exploring, ideating, prototyping, and executing (Rampersad, 2023). 

Eco-design thinking is a circular and iterative process that has no endpoint. The model consists of various stages that may form iterative loops and do not need to follow a specific sequence. Every iteration brings forth fresh insights. Eco-design thinking is a continuous and circular process that requires testing and refining your design while empathizing with yourself, the users, and the environment. Unfortunately, Boeing has ignored essential steps in this design model, with all the consequences that entails. Read “How the Boeing 737 Max Incidents Could Have Been Avoided”. Read also “How SDGs, ESG, and Purpose Fuel Design For Sustainability”.

The most important benefits of this new design model are: Before delving into corporate innovation issues, exploring and redesigning your own life to become innovative is essential, which leads to more empathetic, intelligent, and sustainable innovations that are in line with social innovation and the higher purpose of the company and its employees; A high level of personal integrity and a designer’s empathy is necessary to achieve superior design quality; By gradually building and enhancing the product and detecting defects early on, you can achieve better and more sustainable innovation outcomes.

Lopez: “Boeing can become better. The first step is believing that the state of Boeing is not a natural one — that it can be changed with conscious effort. We just have to choose a better way”.

These “10 Ways to Kill Creativity, Sustainability, and Innovation” apply to Boeing.

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D.

Complimentary Initial Consultation to Enhance Your Design Process and Boost Design Team Performance

If you’re interested in gaining more knowledge about this program, you may want to consider joining our Orlando–Tampa Live Events:

Cultivating a Purpose-Driven Boeing Culture

Building a Purpose-Driven Design Culture in Tech Companies

How Sustainability and Generative AI Fuel Design Innovation

Cultivating Authenticity, Integrity, Empathy, and Critical Thinking in the Age of AI

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D., is a Dutch-American innovation expert who founded the Center of Excellence in Human-Centered and Purpose-Driven 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 and “Europe’s most valuable tech firm“.

Orlando, Florida |  tpsi@live.com |  Phone/WhatsApp: +13053992116 

Sustainable Innovation Fueled by Purpose-Driven Culture

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D.

“The one thing missing from boards of directors is a holistic view on cultivating a purpose-driven culture to fuel sustainable innovation” — Hubert Rampersad

According to Clayton Christensen, a staggering 95% of all product innovations fail. The Startup Genome report also indicates that 92% of startups meet a similar fate. Innovation often fails due to a lack of a sustainable approach to innovations, no holistic approach, and a lack of anchoring innovations in a purpose-driven corporate culture. In today’s complex world, sustainable innovation is crucial. Traditional innovation approaches are inadequate because they lack a holistic approach in which personal innovation, corporate innovation, and social innovation are aligned. The sobering statistics highlight the importance of embedding innovations in a purpose-driven culture in tech companies. The best sustainable innovations align with the innovator’s and company’s purpose and generate mutual value for its stakeholders. When innovations resonate with the employee’s and organization’s higher purpose and benefit the company, its employees, and key constituents, they are more likely to succeed. Purpose-driven tech companies are focused on personal innovation, corporate innovation, and social innovation. They are not only focused on profitability but also on making a positive impact on society. This appears to be different at Boeing, read my article “Boeing’s Top 10 Failures”.

Read: “Boeing lost its way. Other companies should take heed“; it’s become clear that Boeing’s problems run far deeper. They expose decades of American corporate philosophy gone awry. Boeing is a quintessential example of America’s rotting business culture over the past 40 years. Read also “10 Ways to Kill Creativity, Sustainability, and Innovation”.

In this article, I propose a holistic framework for building a purpose-driven culture in tech companies that fosters sustainable innovation. The framework includes several key elements, such as fostering authenticity, integrity, and a sense of purpose and empathy among leaders and employees, cultivating sustainable innovation, and integrating sustainability into the company’s business activities. By following this framework, tech companies can create a culture that benefits their bottom line and contributes to the greater good and leaders and employees in these companies will be genuine and true to themselves. It’s based on my experience as a senior design innovation coach at ASML, the most important tech company in the world and Europe’s most valuable tech firm; the only tech company in the world with a design-driven culture.

HOLISTIC MODEL FOR BUILDING A PURPOSE-DRIVEN CULTURE

In this age of sustainability, American tech companies should not only prioritize profits but also promote high values, high character, and critical thinking among their employees. This will help impact our society’s well-being, integrity, and empathy in a positive way. In this article, I provide a holistic model to realize this sustainably, as shown in this diagram. This model is based on my latest book, “Eco-Design Thinking for Personal, Corporate, and Social Innovation.” Read my article “The End of Design Thinking: Cultivating a Purpose-Driven Design Culture to Fix the World”. This model will aid American tech companies to cultivate a purpose-driven culture and create a stable foundation for sustainable innovation.

This holistic, never-ending, purpose-driven cycle entails six stages:

1. Developing the personal purpose of leaders and employees entails the foundation for cultivating their authenticity, integrity, empathy, emotional intelligence, critical thinking skills, and character. Personal purpose is associated with ethical and emotionally intelligent individuals with a sense of direction.
2. Formulating the personal innovation strategy of leaders and employees; this strategy entails a roadmap to translate their personal purpose into measurable actions.
3. Implement and cultivate their personal innovation strategy according to the Plan-Deploy-Act-Challenge cycle to continuously improve and purposely manage themselves to become creative, innovative, and empathic.
4. Aligning the personal purpose of leaders and employees with their behavior and actions to cultivate their personal integrity and empathy skills; Remember: “The higher your personal integrity, the better your attentiveness, the better your empathic skills, the more sustainable your innovation”– Hubert Rampersad
5. Developing the shared company purpose is about what the company stands for, its reason, and how it benefits society. Shared purpose entails the organization’s soul and joint mission, vision, and core values.
6. Aligning the personal purpose with the shared company purpose. This creates uniformity of personal and company values as well as uniformity of personal innovation and corporate innovation. Matching these two purposes and innovations is essential for achieving an ethical, cohesive, unified company and a happy, engaged, committed, and passionate workforce. It’s about aligning the objectives of leaders and employees with those of the company, as well as fostering mutual value addition. It’s about aligning personal innovation with corporate and social innovation.

Below, I will elaborate on each of these six stages.

Personal Purpose

Having a higher purpose in life means you’re living your values and beliefs. Finding your higher purpose is discovering who you are, what you stand for, what matters to you, and what you can contribute to the world. When someone feels that his life lacks purpose, he may struggle to find motivation and direction. This can lead to a sense of detachment from his values and a lack of inspiration to enrich his life and those around him. Finding motivation and direction can be easier when you have a purpose in life. This will inspire you to become more effective, ethical, and fulfilled. Having a purpose in life will inspire you to discover ways to become more creative, imaginative, and innovative. Life is never richer, fuller, or more rewarding than moving faithfully and persistently toward a compelling purpose. Remember what Elon Musk said: “Don’t even attach yourself to a person, a place, a company, an organization, or a project. 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”.

Your personal purpose entails your identity (mission) and dream (vision). Your dream is related to a higher calling. Everyone has a higher calling, a so-called inner assignment. Personal mission is aimed at being, and personal vision is aimed at becoming. Your personal mission inspires you, and your personal vision motivates you. Your mission and vision statement (personal purpose statement) embodies your values. Your personal mission encompasses your philosophy of life and your overall objectives, indicating who you are, the reason for existence, why you are on earth, what your purpose here is, what you stand for, what values you are most committed to, what is decisive for your success, what is your life purpose, what do you live for, what are your core beliefs, what are your deepest aspirations, what makes you happy,  and what do you do that you are most proud of.  Your personal mission is your personal leading light, keeping you steadily in the course of your dream. “Who am I?” is an identity question. It initiates self-examination of your personal identity (the unique position you find yourself in) and a voyage of discovery. My mission is: “Enjoy the freedom to unleash the creative potential in others, especially if this can mean something in their life.”

Your personal vision statement is a description of how you want to realize your dream in the long term. It indicates where you are going, which values, beliefs, and principles guide you on your way, why you are involved in the design industry, what you want to achieve, what you desire for your life, what your long-term intentions are, what talents, skills and experiences you need to add value to your others, where you want to be at the end of your life, what you hope to become, where you would like your life to be headed, the ideal characteristics you want to possess, your perfect job situation, and what you desire to be. Ask yourself these questions and answer them honestly.

By practicing breathing and silence exercises, you can better connect with your inner self and find answers to these questions. This will help you to discover your higher purpose. Please click on this link to view my personal purpose statement. It also entails my values and beliefs. Read further “How Mindful Meditation Boosts Critical Thinking in the Age of AI and “Crafting Your Authentic Personal Brand: A 5-Step Guide”.

Through this process, you’ll cultivate self-knowledge, self-awareness, self-management, and self-learning, which entails a journey toward personal disruptive innovation, as shown in this diagram:

The best ideas come when you are alone. Self-learning – the ability to gather, process, retain, and evaluate knowledge alone — is the foundation of creativity and imagination. Traditional creativity approaches lack imagination because they neglect self-learning and, because of this, fail to address complex problems. They heavily rely on group meetings and, therefore, miss opportunities to develop innovative and imaginative ideas. Nikola Tesla developed many innovative ideas while working alone for over thirty years. Similarly, Stephen Hawking made significant discoveries while confined to his wheelchair, and Isaac Newton famously discovered gravity while in social isolation. Remember Nikola Tesla’s statement: “Being alone is when ideas are born. This is the secret of innovation”.  Albert Einstein said almost the same: “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”.

Personal Innovation Strategy

To bring your purpose alive, you must translate it into measurable actions. Leaders and employees should formulate their personal innovation strategy to get their personal purpose to life. This is a roadmap to developing a growth mindset, authenticity, integrity, empathy, and critical thinking skills. Without continuous improvement based on your personal innovation strategy, you won’t be successful in life and business. The following are the five steps to develop your personal innovation strategy:

Your personal innovation strategy helps you turn your personal purpose 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. Please click on this link to view my personal innovation strategy. Suppose you want to learn more about this personal innovation strategy system. In that case, I recommend reading my articles “How to Redesign Your Life Based on Your Personal Innovation Strategy” and “Cultivating Critical Thinking in the Age of AI.”

Implementation According to the PDAC Cycle

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 company 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 implement 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. These 50 tips will assist you in implementing your personal innovation strategy effectively.

Aligning Personal Purpose with Personal Behavior 

The next stage ensures harmony between your purpose and actions, aligning 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.” This diagram illustrates this personal integrity concept.

“Empathy is the key to innovate sustainably. Personal integrity is the foundation of empathy. The higher one’s personal integrity, the more empathetic he becomes. This leads to sustainable innovations”– Hubert Rampersad.

To enhance empathy and personal integrity, aligning your personal purpose with your behavior is essential. This involves achieving more excellent compatibility between the two elements so that they are in harmony, as shown in the above diagram. When your personal purpose and behavior match, you can work authentically and purposefully without internal conflicts. This will lead to greater empathy, enhanced charisma, transparency, and trustworthiness.

Personal integrity and empathy

I advise leaders and employees to balance their personal purpose with their current behavior and actions to develop personal integrity and empathy. During this alignment process, they must 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 efforts 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 purpose reflect my desire to work with ethics and empathy? Are there any discrepancies between my personal purpose and my compassionate 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? They must also ask themselves: Have I always acted by my conscience? Have I always done what was right? Have I always worked morally? Have I performed compassionately regularly?

Shared Company Purpose

The shared company purpose statement differs from a personal one, but the fundamental principles remain the same. The shared company purpose entails the company mission, vision, and core values to inspire leaders and employees toward a common goal. The mission encompasses the company’s identity, while the vision is its long-term dream, based on several core values used to strengthen the single-mindedness of its people. The related questions are included in this below diagram:

Look at SpaceX’s and Tesla Inc.’s shared purpose statement.

Aligning Personal Purpose with Shared Company Purpose

Aligning personal purpose with shared company purpose creates uniformity of personal and organizational values. Matching these two purposes involves reaching a higher compatibility between personal and company objectives and mutual value addition. To foster better ethics in the organization and become a purpose-driven company, I encourage leaders and employees to formulate their personal purpose and reflect on aligning their personal purpose with the shared company purpose, as shown in this Figure. This will help them to find their higher purpose and cultivate a good character.

Leaders must communicate their personal purpose to their employees and coach them in this alignment process. By unifying the shared company purpose with their personal purpose, you will create a strong foundation of peace, integrity, engagement, and learning upon which creativity, productivity, and growth can flourish, and life within the company will become a more harmonious and ethical culture. This will catalyze innovation by encouraging a learning culture of curiosity and exploration in the organization. This process is about getting the optimal fit and balance between these activities to enhance productivity, create a climate of trust, and cultivate a purpose-driven tech company. This process is needed because leaders and employees don’t work, study passionately, or expend energy on something they do not believe in or agree with. If there is an effective match between their interests and those of the company, and if their values and the institution’s values align, they will be actively engaged and motivated. This will create trust, and they will work with outstanding commitment and dedication toward realizing the company’s objectives. When their personal purpose is in harmony with the shared purpose (are compatible) and combined in the best interest of both parties, the results will be the good character of leaders and employees, restoration of their higher purpose, trust, engagement, collective sense of belonging, and cultivation of innovation and sustainability. In this way, they are stimulated to commit, act ethically, and focus on those activities that create value for the company, themselves, and others.

Purpose Meeting

I recommend introducing a purpose meeting between leaders and their employees to build a sustainable higher-purpose culture. This meeting is a periodical, informal, voluntary, trusted, and confidential meeting of half an hour between the parties, aligning the personal purpose with the shared purpose as a topic. The purpose meeting also includes individual coaching. It is recommended to be held structurally at least once every two months. The leader plays a crucial role in this process. He/she should be an empathetic, trusted leader, coach, mentor, and role model. This approach fosters ethical awareness among leaders and employees, creating a purpose-driven company. When they see their efforts as part of a greater purpose, they will be more likely to invest their creativity, passion, and energy into their work and work smarter.

A study by Towers Perrin found that instead of matching the right employee to the correct position for long-term success, most US companies and human resource departments emphasize simply filling the job as quickly as possible and on corrupt DEI policies, read “Why DEI Sucks; How to Measure and Fix DEI“. As a result, American companies are losing money as fast as they lose employees. Getting the optimal fit between personal and shared purpose has become necessary to enhance workforce productivity and stimulate creativity, learning, engagement, commitment, and passion.

SUSTAINABLE INNOVATION

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. Technology companies should prioritize sustainable innovation as a fundamental capability to achieve sustainable growth and competitive advantage. Unfortunately, there are no real good examples of American tech companies focused on sustainable innovation. Apple, Google, IBM, Samsung, Uber, Airbnb, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, OceanGate, Tesla, and SpaceX are not design-driven due to their poor design approach they learned at Stanford, MIT, and Harvard. Read my article “Cultivating a Sustainable Purose-Driven Design Culture in Tech Companies”.

We must develop and implement innovative ideas better, faster, smarter, and sustainably. This is why I introduced the Eco-Innovation concept. 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 helps you find your higher purpose and improve your business and personal life for greater happiness and success. Combining personal disruptive innovation with corporate innovation and social innovation will help you generate more imaginative, innovative, empathetic, and disruptive ideas. “We need to understand that all knowledge starts with self-knowledge, all learning starts with self-learning, all innovation starts with self-innovation (personal innovation), real empathy starts with personal integrity, and without empathy, innovations are not sustainable ”- Hubert Rampersad
• 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, corporate, 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.

Traditional innovation approaches are unsuitable for a sustainable circular economy as they focus on process-driven, analytical thinking, cozy, theatrical meetings, and completing related tasks in a particular order using design tools. These approaches lack imagination and fail to address the larger picture. We must adopt a new design method better suited for sustainable innovation. I have therefore introduced eco-design thinking. This creative process involves empathizing with yourself, the end user, and the environment to generate innovative, imaginative, empathetic, and disruptive design ideas that are better aligned with social innovation. The new model is depicted in the figure below and consists of four stages: Explore, Ideate, Prototype, and Execute. It is an iterative, incremental, cyclic, and concentric process of exploring, ideating, prototyping, and executing (Rampersad, 2023). 

Eco-design thinking is a circular and iterative process that has no endpoint. The model consists of various stages that may form iterative loops and do not need to follow a specific sequence. Every iteration brings forth fresh insights. Eco-design thinking is a continuous and circular process that requires testing and refining your design while empathizing with yourself, the users, and the environment. Read also “How SDGs, ESG, and Purpose Fuel Design For Sustainability”.

The most important benefits of this new design model are: Before delving into corporate innovation issues, exploring and redesigning your own life to become innovative is essential, which leads to more empathetic, intelligent, and sustainable innovations that are in line with social innovation and the higher purpose of the company and its employees; A high level of personal integrity and a designer’s empathy is necessary to achieve superior design quality; By gradually building and enhancing the product and detecting defects early on, you can achieve better and more sustainable innovation outcomes.

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D.

Complimentary Initial Consultation to Enhance Your Design Process and Boost Design Team Performance

If you’re interested in gaining more knowledge about this program, you may want to consider joining our Orlando–Tampa Live Events:

Cultivating a Purpose-Driven Boeing Culture

Cultivating a Purpose-Driven and Design Culture in Tech Companies

How Sustainability and Generative AI Fuel Design Innovation

Cultivating Authenticity, Integrity, Empathy, and Critical Thinking in the Age of AI

 Purpose-Driven and Human-Centered AI 

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D., is a Dutch-American innovation expert who founded the Center of Excellence in Human-Centered and Purpose-Driven 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 and “Europe’s most valuable tech firm“.

Orlando, Florida |  tpsi@live.com |  Phone/WhatsApp: +13053992116