Ringing in the new year with Anpan-man
Before the holiday, I wrote a blog entry about John Maeda's appointment as RISD's next president. John has maintained a blog for quite some time. And if you go back and read some of his earlier entries, you can tell he's been thinking a good deal about what it takes to be an effective leader. I want to share a portion of his entry from November 17th, Always keep a stock of spare heads which tells a delightful story of Japanese comicbook hero Anpan-Man.
From John Maeda's blog post:
There is a famous comicbook character for preschoolers in Japan named Anpan-man. Anpan-man is not in any way a dark, brooding character like the vengeful Batman or has the post-teen angst of a figure like Spiderman. No, Anpan-man is simply a superhero made out of a Japanese roll with sweetened red bean paste as filling called anpan as his head (literally) and he's a guy ... so he's literally anpan-guy ... err ... -man (in reality it would be more accurate to call him anpan-boy).Anpan-man can fly as part of his repertoire of superhero powers. But his greatest hero-asset is the ability to feed lost, or unenergized, or sad, or any do-gooder (or even do-wronger) by plucking a part of his face off and feeding another person. Immediately, the helpless soul becomes energized and whole; whereas by Anpan-man's sacrifice, he becomes tired and unable to battle crime. Anpan-man is returned back to wholeness by going to the bakery where he was conceived; the baker bakes him a new head and pops it on Anpan-man and he's all good to go again. There are various religious connotations to the Anpan-man persona that can be drawn of course.
But the core principle here is that Anpan-man can be such a giving soul because he has an infinite well of heads (that can be readily baked) from which to heal and help others. Anpan-man as a leader in real life is hard to find because at the end of the day, we all have our insecurities that make ourselves wonder, "If I give away that ... one ... last ... important thing ... I have nothing left ... can I afford to do that?"
The mindset of successful innovators is something I've been writing about for a while. Over the course of the last four years, I’ve had the opportunity to hear and learn from dozens of innovators from all walks of life - real change agents who have transformed how value gets delivered in every sector of our economy. I don't want to sound trite but I would say that the thread that binds them together is an almost child-like wonder for knowledge. That whole curse of knowledge, you don’t know what you don’t know excuse is lost on them. Quite similar to Anpan-man, they're not afraid of losing what they have because they're always looking for what's next.
Earlier today I spoke with BIF research advisor John Kao, the author of Innovation Nation. We talked a bit about the cultural differences between the Danish value of learning together as a community and the value Americans place on the independent, maverick spirit. As a country, we need to get smart in weaving a new U.S. social fabric that thrives on an ecosystem of cross-thinking, free-spirited collaborators. But the BIF community is already there. We are a group of Anpan-men.
This was a remarkable year for us – our community has grown by leaps and bounds. We are well underway in establishing a new ecosystem here in Rhode Island that provides the US with a platform for experimentation that puts us back out there as a leading competitor in the global innovation race. It’s a bold vision - in essence, we are trying to strategically and experimentally evolve the future. There’s another part to this story though because we’re also, obviously, pro-Rhode Island. The purposeful yet highly diverse collisions of thought and talent will undoubtedly yield unpredicted outcomes both for our state as well as for our country.
On behalf of all of us here at the Business Innovation Factory, I’d like to extend a warm welcome to 2008 – it’s going to be a heck of year.
Posted January 4, 2008 11:52 AM by Chris Flanagan | Permalink
