Hybridity Is the Antidote to Ambiguity
(Last week’s Women’s Foodservice Forum Executive Summit featured excellent educational content from industry leaders and Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management faculty. Here’s the next in this week-long series on key learnings from the conference.)
brand-as-business bit:
“Hybridity” was the subject of a talk by Dev Patnaik, CEO of Jump Associates, a consulting firm focused on growth and strategy.
Hybridity is a multi-disciplinary problem solving approach that the ambiguities of our current world require. For example, fixing the American healthcare system is not just a political problem – it’s a medical, economic, social, religious, and technological problem.
Hybrid thinkers are skilled at bringing multiple perspectives to an issue. To develop hybrid thinking skills, Dev encouraged us to “feed our minds” with varied inputs. That’s why you might just find him reading a copy of Sassy magazine!
To facilitate hybridity in our organizations, we need to identify hybrid thinkers (they’re usually the ones who look like losers in siloed jobs) and create havens for them in which their unconventional approaches can develop and flourish.
Ultimately hybrid thinking helps to reframe problems and clarify the questions we’re really trying to answer.
Check back tomorrow for insights on corporate innovation from KIN Founder Robert Wolcott at the Women’s Foodservice Forum Executive Summit.
previous posts in the series: