Kenneth Mikkelsen > Quotes

“We live on the edge of the future and detect signals early on by accessing a wide variety of people, ideas and information. But to benefit from this sensitivity, you need the support of people who are ready to engage and the patience to act when the moment is right.”
― Kenneth Mikkelsen, The Neo-Generalist: Where You Go is Who You Are

“Conformity and habitual thinking are widespread in our society because they are convenient.”
― Kenneth Mikkelsen, The Neo-Generalist: Where You Go is Who You Are

“The German word Bildung also exists in Scandinavian countries but it cannot be translated easily into English. It refers to the shaping of a human individual’s personality, behaviour and moral attitude through their upbringing, environment and education. Neither education nor formation suffice to cover the comprehensive and complex meaning of the word. Bildung is a much broader concept, encompassing knowledge, judgement, a broad cultural and political orientation, an understanding of science and technology, and a cultivation of the fine arts.”
― Kenneth Mikkelsen, The Neo-Generalist: Where You Go is Who You Are

“A cultivated life provides a sense of orientation and builds bridges between our domains of knowledge and experiences. Theory is of little value in and of itself. Only through action and reflection can we gain a deeper understanding of its usefulness.”
― Kenneth Mikkelsen, The Neo-Generalist: Where You Go is Who You Are

“Through living in multiple worlds this type of polymathic generalist fulfils the trickster role, connecting, cross-pollinating, disrupting, guiding. They bring the concept of the portfolio person into the twenty-first century.”
― Kenneth Mikkelsen, The Neo-Generalist: Where You Go is Who You Are

“Throughout the history of humankind, our explorers, scientists, inventors and artists have constantly reshaped the boundaries between the known and the unknown.”
― Kenneth Mikkelsen, The Neo-Generalist: Where You Go is Who You Are

“The sharing of a narrative, regardless of the medium within which it is packaged, is the ultimate goal of detection”
― Kenneth Mikkelsen, The Neo-Generalist: Where You Go is Who You Are

“The trickster both takes and gives. They go where the action is, then they inspire others to take action for themselves. The neo-generalist, like the trickster, mobilises their networked connections to access knowledge, to add to it, to keep it in motion, sharing with others. They practise the art of personal knowledge mastery, both teaching and learning. It is in the neo-generalist that multidisciplinarity and knowledge diversity coalesce. They collect, sometimes steal, knowledge from different domains, mixing and sampling in order to present new perspectives to these different fields. They move ideas from one discipline to another and thereby transform them. They too move others to action.”
― Kenneth Mikkelsen, The Neo-Generalist: Where You Go is Who You Are

“Every polymathic generalist is, in fact, a serial specialist. Even as they become known for one thing, they are quick to demonstrate that they should be recognised for another too.”
― Kenneth Mikkelsen, The Neo-Generalist: Where You Go is Who You Are

“people. It is this ability to reframe, to see problems and opportunities from multiple perspectives, to understand if not agree with different points of view, that is inherent in the neo-generalist. If you live in more than one world, you tend to see in more than one way.”
― Kenneth Mikkelsen, The Neo-Generalist: Where You Go is Who You Are

“It is that ability to constructively challenge, to be in many worlds at once, introducing knowledge and ideas from elsewhere into a different context, where I feel my neo-generalism has been most beneficial to the individuals and the organisations I have worked with. On occasion, however, I have had to take a Trojan Horse approach, withholding my multidisciplinarity until others have grown comfortable with me in relation to a given specialism, only gradually revealing other capabilities and interests that can add value.”
― Kenneth Mikkelsen, The Neo-Generalist: Where You Go is Who You Are

“Knowledge brokers build bridges between people and ideas by being exposed to many different specialities. They challenge the restraints of specialists and enlarge their imagination by exposing them to alternative ways of knowing, doing and being.”
― Kenneth Mikkelsen, The Neo-Generalist: Where You Go is Who You Are

“With the rise of the knowledge worker, the former monuments to carbon-fuelled manual industries themselves metamorphosed into galleries, restaurants, dwellings and hubs for start-up enterprises. At the same time, digital temples of reason were created, inhabited by people who commune in both virtual and physical spaces. These are communities and movements that have been built through the hyperlink; the connection of people and knowledge facilitated by fluctuating networks.”
― Kenneth Mikkelsen, The Neo-Generalist: Where You Go is Who You Are

“First, there is the restlessness of the neo-generalist themselves. Their natural inquisitiveness pulls them towards new paths to investigate rather than the well-trodden routes. Sometimes they have no desire to belong, revelling in their outsider status, finding playful ways, radical ideas, with which to challenge and disrupt entrenched ways of thinking, doing and seeing. Always both/and, never either/or. Second, there is a lack of acceptance by the existing group, which mobilises its antibodies to deal with the foreign agent. Here the neo-generalist’s otherness is viewed as a threat. The feeling of alienation then results from the attempts to exclude and eject.”
― Kenneth Mikkelsen, The Neo-Generalist: Where You Go is Who You Are

“But I was easily bored once I understood a topic. The tension that came from experiencing things with a fresh perspective was a driving force for me.”
― Kenneth Mikkelsen, The Neo-Generalist: Where You Go is Who You Are

“Society’s shifting tectonic plates pose a challenge. The individual lives in a state of continually becoming. Constant motion is necessary to achieve balance and progression. Simone de Beauvoir touched on this in The Ethics of Ambiguity, observing that: ‘life is occupied in both perpetuating itself and surpassing itself; if all it does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying’. When our worldview and what we hold to be true is challenged, we experience a sense of disorientation, a culture shock. In Buddhism, the term dukkha describes this state of being. Dukkha is the pain we experience when we cannot figure out how to let go of what no longer exists. It is usually translated into English as suffering but it also means temporary, limited and imperfect.”
― Kenneth Mikkelsen, The Neo-Generalist: Where You Go is Who You Are

“A person can be physically present, apparently part of an organisation, a community or culture. In reality, however, they feel far away, alienated, outsiders, temporary visitors.”
― Kenneth Mikkelsen, The Neo-Generalist: Where You Go is Who You Are

“Too often politicians present themselves as the fixers of mistakes made by the previous incumbents. Their eyes are fixed on the rear-view mirror rather than looking to the future through the windscreen.”
― Kenneth Mikkelsen, The Neo-Generalist: Where You Go is Who You Are

“This was Edison’s legacy.”
― Kenneth Mikkelsen, The Neo-Generalist: Where You Go is Who You Are