technology

“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:

tesla 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

6 Steps to Cultivating Purpose-Driven Leadership

April 28, 2024April 29, 2024 by Eco-Design Thinking

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.

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

How Sustainability and Generative AI Fuels 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

April 28, 2024April 28, 2024 by Eco-Design Thinking

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:

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:

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

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

April 23, 2024May 17, 2024 by Eco-Design Thinking

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D.

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

The board consists mainly of incompetent left-brain bookkeepers with no engineering background and no understanding of airline industry safety. How to revive.
The board prioritizes maximizing profits for shareholders and speed to meet deadlines over quality and aircraft safety. How to revive.
Board members lack a strategic and innovative vision and holistic thinking skills related to the airline industry. How to revive.
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.
The company lacks a sustainable, purpose-driven ethical culture. How to revive.
The company does not control its supply chain effectively. How to revive.
Poor design methodology; non-holistic design approach and non-purpose-driven design culture. How to revive.
The company is merely treating the symptoms of the problems rather than addressing the root causes. How to revive.
Mental absence of assembly workers due to disengagement leads to a lack of critical thinking skills and many mistakes. How to revive.
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:

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.
Formulating the personal innovation strategy of leaders and employees; this strategy entails a roadmap to translate their personal purpose into measurable actions.
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.
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
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.
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 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

Aligning Personal Purpose with Personal Behavior

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.

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

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

10 Ways to Kill Creativity, Sustainability, and Innovation

April 16, 2024May 17, 2024 by Eco-Design Thinking

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D.

The world faces an abundance of complex problems that demand attention. To address these challenges, genuine creativity, sustainability, and innovation are required. Unfortunately, most corporate practices inadvertently hinder these essential elements, leading to uninspired results and design flaws. In this article, I delve into ten ways corporations inadvertently stifle creativity, sustainability, and innovation; the figure below illustrates these inhibiting factors.

Ten ways to kill creativity, sustainability, and innovation are:

Focus on innovation theater instead of sustainable innovation; neglect a holistic purpose-driven approach and keep it superficial, theatrical, and cozy. How to revive.
Neglect personal innovation and social innovation in the process of corporate innovation. How to revive.
Involve mainly left-brainers in the innovation process; systematically promote only non-technical bookkeepers on the board of directors, focusing on shareholder value rather than purpose-driven. How to revive.
Don’t look at the bigger context holistically; focus mainly on parts of the problem. How to revive.
Don’t be genuine, authentic, and empathic; don’t be human-centered and purpose-driven. How to revive.
Neglect genuine sustainability; focus on the symptoms rather than the root causes and neglect empathy. How to revive.
Make your design process linear and ad-hoc, with an endpoint; don’t make it a never-ending, non-linear, circular, iterative, incremental, cyclic, and concentric process. Neglect cultivating a purpose-driven design culture. How to revive.
Develop innovative and imaginative ideas by relying heavily on cozy and theatrical group meetings. Neglect critical thinking, and don’t be a loner. How to revive.
Don’t emphasize the designer’s imagination and disruption; focus on knowledge rather than imagination. How to revive.
Solve problems using the same thinking that created them. Don’t nurture authenticity, resilience, personal integrity, and an open growth mindset. How to revive.

The systematic killing of creativity, sustainability, and innovation within corporate environments is a matter of concern. It’s illustrated by my following articles: “Top-10 Causes of Bad Designs”.

“Boeing’s Top 10 Failures“

“Why OceanGate’s Design Approach Sucks”

“Why Creativity Sucks”

“How STEM Education is Failing in the Age of AI‘

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D.

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

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D., founded the Center of Excellence in Design-Driven, 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.

Why Creativity Sucks

April 13, 2024April 22, 2024 by Eco-Design Thinking

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D.

Sustainable creativity fosters wise innovation in today’s intricate world and the AI age. 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. In fact, you tend to be more creative when working alone rather than in groups.

Creativity and critical thinking are crucial when dealing with AI. Creativity and critical thinking are two types of thinking that involve different skills and behaviors. Creativity is the ability to generate new ideas and solutions, while critical thinking is the ability to evaluate the validity and worth of existing ideas and solutions. Creativity is needed to develop intelligent AI algorithms that will help you distinguish between important and unimportant in a conversation with generative AI. By using critical thinking, we can improve our ability to effectively communicate, solve problems, build arguments, and draw conclusions when working with AI. Employees must be able to question AI-generated results, recognize possible limitations in the underlying data, and be aware of potential biases in AI algorithms.

In this article, I provide the holistic Personal Disruptive Innovation roadmap for cultivating creativity and critical thinking effectively.

Creativity and Critical Thinking Roadmap

Personal Disruptive Innovation is the creativity, authenticity, integrity, empathy, and critical thinking roadmap that will help you unlock your creative potential by cultivating a solid growth, ethical and critical thinking mindset, creating new and unique opportunities, and disrupting your current target market. Personal disruptive innovation is a term that describes a holistic system for developing human intelligence, authenticity, empathy, integrity, and critical thinking. This concept is based on my latest book, “Eco-Design Thinking for Personal, Corporate, and Social Innovation.” This 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 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 cultivate self-knowledge, self-awareness, self-management, and self-learning to drive personal innovation, which can help you become more creative and resilient 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 Ambition – Personal Purpose

Although the personal disruptive innovation model consists of 5 phases, I will only focus on phase 1 (Personal Ambition – Personal Purpose) in this article because the foundation of creativity and critical thinking lies in this phase. This initial step involves engaging in a reflective process that includes deep thinking, introspection, and self-reflection. The outcome of this phase will be the creation of your personal ambition or purpose statement. This statement comprises your mission, vision, and key roles. You can click this link to view my personal ambition/purpose statement.

Having a clear purpose is crucial to becoming a visionary. According to Elon 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?” Your personal ambition/purpose statement supports an innovative, creative, imaginative mindset. The figure below shows the framework for personal ambition/purpose. 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. Read “How Mindful Meditation Boosts Critical Thinking in the Age of AI.”

Self-knowledge, Self-awareness, Self-management, Self-learning

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 more you want to be innovative, the more you should develop self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is the foundation of your higher purpose. Self-knowledge entails insight into your nature and abilities based on your personal mission, vision, and key roles. Self-awareness is the experience of your personality and the ability to tune in to your feelings, thoughts, and actions. Self-management entails the ability to control your behavior, thoughts, and emotions. Self-learning is the ability to gather, process, retain, and evaluate knowledge alone.

Traditional creativity approaches suck

The best ideas come when you are alone. Self-learning 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 creative 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”.

Stanford’s traditional design thinking relies heavily on cozy collaborative meetings and what can be described as creativity theater, where the focus does not lead to sustainable creativity development. On the other hand, my eco-design thinking approach takes an inside-out approach to creativity, emphasizing the designer’s imagination and disruption. It encourages a more independent and innovative growth mindset. Please read my articles “The End of Design Thinking: Cultivating a Purpose-Driven Design Culture to Fix the World” and “10 Ways to Kill Creativity, Sustainability, and Innovation”.

Human consciousness

Spirituality can play a vital role in this creativity 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 your personal ambition, you will 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.”

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 also act like a receiver and tune in at the same frequency.

My article “Sustainable Innovation Fueled by Purpose-Driven Culture” explains the remaining four stages of the personal disruptive innovation model.

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.

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

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

April 12, 2024April 16, 2024 by Eco-Design Thinking

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”.

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

March 28, 2024April 16, 2024 by Eco-Design Thinking

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:

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:

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.

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.

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

Nurturing Authenticity, Integrity, Empathy, and Critical Thinking: A 5-Step Guide

March 6, 2024April 16, 2024 by Eco-Design Thinking

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D.

In the age of AI, being your true authentic self and having personal integrity are crucial for empathy and critical thinking. Authenticity means staying true to oneself, while personal integrity involves aligning our actions with our values to avoid going against our conscience. Our conscience is what guides us to differentiate between what’s right and wrong. Authenticity fosters purpose-driven leadership. Purpose-driven leadership is when a leader prioritizes their purpose and values over anything else when making decisions on behalf of the business. Purpose-driven leaders are responsible for leading their organizations through decisions and innovations supporting their core purposes, values, and strengths. The idea is that if you want to be successful, you must have a clear sense of what your purpose is in your organization and how it relates to the larger world.

Empathy is comprehending and feeling someone else’s emotions, thoughts, and experiences. It’s the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. It’s important to note that emotional intelligence plays a significant role in developing personal integrity and empathy. Emotional intelligence helps AI users succeed at work and makes them more efficient, productive, and empathetic. It is a crucial skill for building relationships with AI and improving communication.

Critical thinking refers to higher levels of thinking that enable you to think effectively and rationally. It involves identifying ambiguity, assessing and considering previously held views, and making well-informed decisions and judgments. Skepticism, reasoning, logic, correlation, and causation are all components of critical thinking that help you distinguish between important and unimportant in a conversation with generative AI. By using critical thinking, we can improve our ability to effectively communicate, solve problems, build arguments, and draw conclusions when working with AI.

In my article “How To Design a Better World,” I discussed creating a better world by prioritizing authenticity, personal integrity, empathy, and critical thinking.

Prioritizing authenticity, empathy, integrity, and critical thinking is crucial in the age of AI.

Authenticity, integrity, empathy, and critical thinking are crucial when dealing with AI. Employees must be able to question AI-generated results, recognize possible limitations in the underlying data, and be aware of potential biases in AI algorithms. To examine AI-generated effects ethically, your personal brand must accurately reflect your true character. This requires genuine authenticity, honesty, and a commitment to doing what you say you will do. To question AI-generated results effectively, you must ask yourself first. Are you living and acting according to your personal ambition? Do you deliver on your word? Do you keep your promises to yourself? Do you consistently live your values? If you fail to commit yourself, you won’t have inner peace and won’t develop personal credibility and charisma. A personal brand built on lies will eventually fail (the truth always comes out). In contrast, a brand built on a person’s authentic character is sustainable and robust and shows transparency and accountability. When you establish this inner authority, you become more empathetic, and this will strengthen your critical thinking skills.

The Authenticity, Integrity, Empathy, and Critical Thinking Roadmap

Personal Disruptive Innovation is the authenticity, integrity, empathy, and critical thinking roadmap that will help you unlock your creative potential by cultivating a solid growth, ethical and critical thinking mindset, creating new and unique opportunities, and disrupting your current target market. Personal disruptive innovation is a term that describes a holistic system for developing human intelligence, authenticity, empathy, integrity, and critical thinking. Combining personal disruptive innovation with AI can generate more imaginative, innovative, empathetic, and disruptive ideas with fewer ethical errors. The concept of personal disruptive innovation is based on my latest book, “Eco-Design Thinking for Personal, Corporate, and Social Innovation.” This 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:

The personal disruptive innovation model consists of the following five phases:

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:

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.

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.

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

How Generative AI is Fueling Sustainable Design Innovation

March 5, 2024May 16, 2024 by Eco-Design Thinking

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D.

The era of design thinking has come to an end. Read the MIT Technology Review article “Design thinking was supposed to fix the world. Where did it go wrong? An approach that promised to democratize design may have done the opposite” (2023). We need to evolve beyond design thinking in the age of AI. The AI industry needs a radical new design approach that goes far beyond the original design thinking methodology. It needs a holistic, sustainable, purpose-driven design culture rather than relying on a theatrical and ad-hoc design process that involves cozy design meetings with sticky notes and fun design tools. I have described this in detail in my new article “The End of The Design Thinking Era: The Future of Industrial Design Innovation”.

To move forward, we must reimagine design innovation with sustainability at its core. This means shifting our focus away from rigid design steps and tools and fostering a sustainable purpose-driven design culture. Tech companies must focus beyond shareholder value and prioritize social responsibility. Boeing, for instance, should balance its focus on profits with a commitment to sustainable practices. Read “Boeing’s Top 10 Failures”.

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

10 ways to kill

Purpose-Driven Design Culture in the Age of AI

Technology companies should prioritize cultivating a purpose-driven design culture based on eco-design thinking as a fundamental capability to achieve sustainable growth and competitive advantage. These companies are not only focused on profitability but also on making a positive impact on society. They go beyond merely understanding what customers want and why they like it. Look what happened with Boeing due to the lack of a purpose-driven design culture. 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” (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. Changing CEOs or hiring more engineers won’t eliminate Boeing’s problems. The company needs to rethink its reason for existing and what it should provide to society as an enterprise.

A holistic model for building a sustainable purpose-driven design culture

Tech companies should prioritize profits and promote values, high character, and ethical critical thinking among their employees. This will help impact our society’s well-being, integrity, and empathy positively. In this section, 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 is also based on my experience as a senior design innovation coach at ASML, the most crucial tech company in the world and Europe’s most valuable tech firm, the only tech company in the world with a sustainable design-driven culture.

This holistic, never-ending, purpose-driven cycle entails six stages that has been described in detail in my article “Sustainable Innovation Fueled by Purpose-Driven Culture“. We provide free initial consultation to tech companies to build a sustainable purpose-driven design culture, improve their design process, and boost their design team performance, read “Complimentary Initial Consultation to Enhance Your Design Process and Boost Design Team Performance”. In the following sections, I will focus on building a purpose-driven design-culture based on my eco-design thinking model. Read also “How SDGs, ESG, and Purpose Fuel Design For Sustainability”.

A purpose-driven design culture requires a new way of thinking

A purpose-driven design culture needs a new way of thinking. As Einstein once said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” That’s where eco-design thinking emerges, shifting from the traditional fixed mindset to a more dynamic growth mindset. The difference between these two approaches is illustrated in the diagram below.

Many designers favor their brain’s left side and ignore the right, resulting in a lack of balance. This limits their ability to approach complex design issues creatively and with authenticity.

A purpose-driven design culture requires a new generation of brilliant engineers

We need a new generation of brilliant engineers in the age of AI with a new mindset to design a better world and create a vibrant future. Engineers must possess skills like creativity, imagination, agility, critical thinking, and sustainability to become visionary and innovative entrepreneurial leaders or to design innovative products. These skills are not typically associated with engineering, but the rapid rate of technological change has made most college and university courses obsolete by the time students graduate. Read “We Need a New Generation of Brilliant Engineers“.

STEM programs give engineers insights into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. However, they often fail to nurture the holistic, authentic, and imaginative qualities essential for tomorrow’s engineers. Read “How STEM Education is Failing in the Age of AI”.

A Purpose-driven design culture requires sustainable innovation

In today’s complex world, sustainable innovation is crucial. Traditional innovation approaches are inadequate because they lack a holistic approach. This is why I introduced my Eco-Innovation concept, which focuses on the human side of innovation.

Eco-Innovation involves integrating sustainability into the process of innovation. I identify three types of innovation that fall under this category:

Personal innovation is unlocking your creative potential and creating new opportunities for yourself. By disrupting your current market, you can make a significant social impact. Personal Disruptive Innovation by Hubert Rampersad helps you find your purpose and improve your life for greater happiness and health.
Corporate innovation involves applying new ideas to create new products, processes, or services that increase the value of a company. Corporate innovation also encompasses Open Innovation by Chesbrough, Disruptive Innovation by Clayton Christensen, and BlockChain Innovation.
Social innovation is developing and implementing new ideas and solutions that meet social needs and strengthen civil society. There is some overlap between social innovation and social entrepreneurship. Social innovation aims to improve the world by implementing innovative ideas that create social and environmental change, benefiting many people. Social entrepreneurs seek the most effective ways to achieve their social mission and provide social benefits.

Personal Disruptive Innovation

Personal disruptive innovation is an innovative approach that unlocks your creative potential by cultivating a strong growth mindset, creating new unique opportunities, disrupting your current target market, and allowing you to make a significant social impact. It involves five steps, as shown in this model: 1. Personal Ambition, 2. Personal Brand, 3. Personal Innovation Strategy, 4. Implementation, and 5. Personal Integrity & Empathy.

The roadmap for personal disruptive innovation begins with personal ambition (personal mission, vision, and key roles), founded on self-knowledge. It’s important to remember that all knowledge begins with self-knowledge, all learning begins with self-learning, all innovation starts with self-innovation (personal innovation), and authentic empathy begins with personal integrity. Self-knowledge involves knowing oneself. Remember what Aristotle said: “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” To be more innovative and creative, designers should focus more on cultivating self-knowledge, which is the foundation of imagination. Read “Why Creativity Sucks“.

By defining your personal ambition, you can uncover your true purpose and understand the meaning of your life. 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”. The 5 stages in the personal disruptive innovation model have been described in detail in my articles “5 Steps to Cultivate Authenticity, Integrity, Empathy, and Critical Thinking” and “Cultivating Critical Thinking in the Age of AI”.

To be discussed in the next section, the eco-design thinking model starts with personal disruptive innovation to understand, explore, redefine, and redesign yourself before solving the design problem. You need to become innovative and empathic ﬁrst to develop innovative designs for the end users. You need to develop disruptive skills first. You need to reinvent and redesign yourself first to become a disruptor. In the upcoming section, I will discuss the eco-design thinking model, which emphasizes personal disruptive innovation as the first step towards understanding, exploring, redefining, and redesigning oneself before solving any design problems. Being innovative and empathic is essential to developing innovative designs that cater to the end users’ needs. Therefore, developing disruptive skills and reinventing oneself to become a critical thinker is necessary.

Top 10 Causes of Bad Designs

My article “Top-10 Causes of Bad Designs” highlights the negative impact of bad designs due to a lack of consideration for sustainability and generative AI. Some well-known examples of such methods include the botched vaccine rollout in America, Citibank’s loss of $500 million due to an unfriendly loan management tool, the $2 trillion F-35 project, Boeing 737 Max airplane, the T-14 Armata Russian Tank, and the Samsung. Galaxy Note 7. Please take the time to read my article “Why OceanGate’s Design Approach Sucks; How the Doomed Titan Sub Tragedy Could Have Been Avoided.” CEOs who prioritize their personal design choices over critical safety regulations, endangering human lives, can learn a valuable lesson from the tragedy of the Titan. This also applies to individuals like Elon Musk and companies like Boeing. Please look at my article “How could Elon Musk’s $3 billion Mars rocket failure have been avoided?”. The following figure displays the top 10 reasons for bad designs.

Read “How the Boeing 737 Max Incidents Could Have Been Avoided”.

Eco-Design Thinking as part of a purpose-driven design culture

As mentioned, the world has no shortage of complex problems to address. These problems cannot be solved sustainably with outdated design thinking. A sustainable, purpose-driven design culture should take center stage rather than relying on a theatrical and ad-hoc design process that involves cozy design meetings with sticky notes and fun design tools. Eco-design thinking is part of this culture. It prioritizes creating intelligent, resilient, empathetic, and honest designers. This new creative process involves empathizing with yourself, the end user, and the environment to generate innovative, imaginative, empathetic, and disruptive design ideas. 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. It is recommended that this process be repeated until the issues of the designer and end-user reach an acceptable level. 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. At any design stage, generative AI tools can produce the best empathic design customized to the end-user’s needs and the environment.

The process of eco-design thinking involves exploring, ideating, prototyping, and executing different aspects of a design. Each iteration is then reviewed to identify additional requirements, and the process is repeated to produce a new and improved version of the product or service. The model involves creating a rough product or process in one iteration, reviewing it, and then improving it in the next iteration until it is complete. Based on the results of incremental prototyping and execution, changes and refinements are made to the most recent iteration of the design.

To create a smart design, it’s essential to first explore your life, empathize with the end user, and research the environment. Once you’ve identified the design problem and user needs, you can generate ideas to meet those needs. From there, you’ll develop a prototype of the finished product or service and test it to ensure it’s meeting the requirements in the best possible way. If adjustments need to be made based on the test results, you’ll adjust the design accordingly and execute the solution. If the prototype doesn’t meet the need, you’ll create a new one and start the process again until the end user is satisfied.

The 4 Stages in the Eco-Design Thinking Model

Let’s examine the four stages of the eco-design thinking model more closely:

EXPLORE

The first step in this design process is to empathize with yourself, examine and redesign your life, and reinvent yourself before tackling the design problem. This will give you a better understanding of yourself and the design challenge. The goal is to transform yourself into an innovative, empathetic, disruptive designer who can keep up with generative AI and use generative AI tools effectively to generate more inventive, imaginative, disruptive, compassionate, and creative ideas. The exploration phase includes three sub-phases:

Personal disruptive innovation: Personal disruptive innovation refers to a groundbreaking innovation that unleashes the designer’s creative potential, creates innovative personal opportunities, disrupts your target market, and enables you to make a notable social impact. This type of innovation is based on a framework and roadmap that helps you explore your life, develop resilience, reinvent and redesign your life, cultivate your personal eco-design thinking brand, and uphold personal integrity. By unlocking your creative potential, personal disruptive innovation allows you to disrupt the usual course of your life. Before exploring the design problem, it’s essential to understand yourself and your environment empathetically. This initial stage focuses on exploring your life. Personal disruptive innovation also involves creating a powerful, authentic personal brand for compelling storytelling⠀ using eco-design thinking during every step of the design processg. Elon Musk is currently the world’s most powerful personal brand and a brilliant storyteller. He connects emotionally with his audience, creating a solid bond. ChatGTP is a helpful tool for improving storytelling. I recommend reading my articles “50 Tips For Becoming a Disruptor“ and “Crafting Your Authentic Personal Brand: A 5-Step Guide“.
Empathize: Before moving forward, gaining a compassionate understanding of the end user and the issue that needs to be resolved is essential. This can be achieved by listening to their stories, observing their behavior, and engaging with them. By empathizing with the end user, we can better understand their experiences and develop a personal connection with the problem. It’s equally essential to empathize with ourselves and the surrounding environment first. To design effectively, it is necessary to have empathy and understand the needs of yourself, the end user, and the environment. During this stage, generative AI can enhance collaborations between designers and end-users of the product. It also enables end-users to empathize with each other more effectively.
Define: During this stage, you will compile the information that was collected during your empathetic research, analyze your observations, interpret the empirical findings, and define the problem in a way that is centered around the customer. The end result should be a problem statement that is customer-focused and human-centered. ChatGTP is available to help you formulate a compelling argument.

IDEATE

The ideate phase is composed of three sub-phases, which are:

Initiate: Choose a facilitator who can effectively initiate and manage discussions, revisit the problem, and establish guidelines for brainstorming and generative AI tools. It is essential that the chosen facilitator has experience with the personal disruptive innovation method and has applied it to himself.
Think: Engaging in divergent and convergent thinking to develop innovative design ideas. While convergent thinking focuses on finding the best solution to a problem, the generative AI tool Stable Diffusion can support divergent thinking by connecting product ideas and generating fresh ideas. By encouraging designers to think like there is no box and consider new possibilities for a product’s form and function, Stable Diffusion can help them arrive at innovative solutions they may not have thought otherwise. This is a departure from outdated design methods prioritizing function over form. With Stable Diffusion, designers can use a series of prompts to build upon their ideas and create impactful visual designs, read Eapen et al. (2023). With ChatGPT, you can evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of new concepts and choose the optimal solution.
Synthesize: To create a coherent whole, it is essential to combine various product ideas. Analyze and connect your thoughts, and choose the strongest to develop themes. Cluster similar ideas together and select the best clusters. Assign a group to each set to evaluate the ideas, and hold separate follow-up meetings to eliminate any unusable ideas based on selection criteria. During this synthesis phase, you can use Stable Diffusion to quickly evaluate a wide range of product concepts based on the most important criteria and combine them into a cohesive whole.

PROTOTYPE

The prototype phase is made up of three sub-phases, which are:

Create an experience: After implementing solutions into the prototypes, they are evaluated based on user experiences. It is essential to guide the end users through the prototype to allow them to experience it firsthand. During this stage, generative AI tools like Stable Diffusion and Midjourney can assist in creating product storyboards. At the same time, ChatGPT can aid in improving the design and helping the end users understand the prototype. Collaborations between designers and end users can be enhanced using generative AI to co-create better strategies. Designers can benefit from the assistance of generative AI in effectively communicating their designs through both written and visual formats, resulting in more creative and intelligent designs. Additionally, generative AI can provide crucial details that make the design more understandable and feasible. Here’s an excellent storyboard example where (Eapen et al., 2023) utilized the Stable Diffusion generative AI tool to create a design for a flying car.Designers can leverage GPTs to enhance the customer experience by delivering personalized recommendations and content. The customized AI algorithms can analyze user behavior and preferences to increase engagement and satisfaction.
Feedback: You can improve your solution by listening to customer feedback. It may be helpful to utilize storytelling once again to gather feedback. Generative AI can aid in accepting new ideas from the user, while Stable Diffusion can help design a better solution.
Iterate: If the end user disapproves of the solution and provides negative feedback, you must make adjustments and repeat the process. This involves modifying the prototype based on the feedback received. If the end user is not content with the results, redefining the issue and empathizing with them more effectively is essential. During this stage, generative AI can help by comprehending the end user better, which can reduce the number of iterations. Consequently, design costs and time will be decreased.

EXECUTE

Execution has always been the sticky wicket for outdated design thinking. The execute phase in eco-design thinking is made up of three sub-phases:

Test: When presenting the prototype, it is essential to allow the end user to fully experience it. Through testing, you can determine whether the solution is effective or not. The tragedy of the OceanGate Titan submarine and the Boeing 737 Max
could have been avoided if proper testing had been performed before its use. Under no circumstances should the sub be used for commercial deep dive missions until thoroughly tested. Please take the time to read this article, “OceanGate’s approach to engineering was ad hoc and ultimately inappropriate.” ChatGTP’s storytelling feature can also gather consumer feedback on how the final product is used in real life. This feedback can help designers understand users’ empathic experience when using the product or service. During this stage, generative AI can improve the design by facilitating communication between the designer and the end user, making it more easily understood.
Refine: If the testing phase doesn’t yield positive results, it will be necessary to go through another round of iteration to refine the design. After testing, the process can be repeated to improve the solution or move on to the implementation stage if the end-user approves. During this stage, generative AI can be utilized again to create a better design.
Implement: Once the final solution has been approved, it will be implemented, realized, and communicated. Take pleasure in the eco-design thinking experience and note what you have learned and unlearned throughout the design process. Celebrate any accomplishments and move forward to the next project. During this phase, generative AI can once again assist in creating an even better design and documenting the learning process.

Using ChatGTP and personal branding (as part of the personal disruptive innovation methodology) for storytelling can be incredibly useful in various stages of the design process. It helps to engage customers and create an emotional connection with them. It’s also helpful in defining problems and building empathy and trust with users. This eco-design thinking model facilitates building a sustainable, purpose-driven design culture in tech companies.

Benefits of the eco-design thinking model:

Eco-design thinking is the foundation of building a sustainable purpose-driven design culture in tech companies.
Before delving into design issues, exploring and redesigning your own life is essential. This approach leads to more intelligent and innovative designs and better use of generative AI, resulting in better designs.
The use of generative AI in the initial stage of the design process promotes a culture of personal disruptive innovation, creating unique and empathetic designs.
A high level of personal integrity and a designer’s empathy form the starting point to achieve superior design quality.
By gradually building and enhancing the product or process and detecting defects early on, you can achieve faster design outcomes.
By utilizing generative AI and compelling storytelling, you can obtain more reliable user feedback. This can be achieved by implementing a personal eco-design thinking branding blueprint, improving design quality.

Various traditional design tools can be accessed online.

There are numerous traditional design tools accessible online for each phase of the design process. For instance, consider Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University, IDEO, Designkit, D esignorate, University of Virginia, InVisionApp, Board of Innovation, and Pinterest. This article introduces a visionary and sustainable design perspective rather than discussing design tools. Corporate America needs a sustainable, purpose-driven design culture, not cozy design thinking tools.

Eco-Design Thinking Tool Kit

Additional design tools have been incorporated to aid and streamline implementing the new Eco-Design Thinking approach. These tools have been aligned with the model to boost its efficiency:

Personal Disruptive Innovation Methodology for innovative ideas and more imaginative designs.
Generative AI tools like Midjourney, ChatGPT, and Stable Diffusion.
Personal Innovation Strategy: to become more innovative and intelligent.
Personal Eco-Design Thinking Branding System to enhance storytelling and empathy.
Breathing and Silence Exercises to enhance imagination.
Personal Integrity Methodology: to exhibit empathic behavior effectively and become a better human being.
Eco-Design Thinking Code of Ethics for ethical designs that foster empathy.
Designer’s Alignment and Engagement in the Design Team: to achieve higher design team performance, it is essential to ensure that the designer is happy, empathic, and engaged first, as this will ultimately lead to a better experience for the end user. Read “How to Enhance Employee Engagement and Team Performance at SpaceX and Tesla.“

Hubert Rampersad, Ph.D.

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

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

The Future of Industrial Design Innovation

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

Purpose-Driven and Human-Centered 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 important tech company in the world and “Europe’s most valuable tech firm. “

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

Tag: technology

How Visionary Tech Leaders Identified and Achieved Their Big Dreams

6 Steps to Cultivating Purpose-Driven Leadership

5 Steps to Unlock Your Creative Potential

Boeing’s Top 10 Failures

10 Ways to Kill Creativity, Sustainability, and Innovation

Why Creativity Sucks

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

Crafting Your Authentic Personal Brand: A 5-Step Guide

Nurturing Authenticity, Integrity, Empathy, and Critical Thinking: A 5-Step Guide

How Generative AI is Fueling Sustainable Design Innovation