Ben is equating -- roughly -- the kind of intelligence measured by IQ tests with
the kinds of skills that Novell needs to meet the challenge of the competition
in a rapidly growing industry. In one post, Ben referred to people who have
good intuition.
This made me wonder if the skill sets needed in a rapidly gorwing industry are
not indeed different than those needed in a more mature industry. Having been
involved in high-tech industry, steel industry, engineering, and now retail
merchandising, I have seen a wide variety of skills, and the different
industries clearly attract people with different 'psychologies of work'.
In a rapdily growing industry, the emphasis is on speed, orders of magnitude,
and insight into the biggest opportunities. If you travel over to the mature
industry -- sorry about the terminology -- most companies are nearly optimized,
and the empasis is on fine-line analysis that identifies slim margins of
opportunities. Investing in detailed analysis is ok and actually much more
necessary than in the fast-growing industry. Looking for opportunities in
non-intuitive areas takes a lot more analysis, a lot more deep thought.
This is not to minimize the deepness of thought in the fast-growing industry.
It is just that deepness is, as Ben said, more intuitive and faster-paced. By
the nature of the fast-growing industry, the opportunities are lying more on the
surface than they are in the more mature industry.
Does this make sense?
--Rol Fessenden LL Bean, Inc. 76234.3636@compuserve.com
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>