Cognitive Ambidexterity Essay

INTRODUCTION

This paper is mainly related to the idea of cognitive ambidexterity, the need for creativity and creative intelligence and the need for leaders today to utilize their creativity to capture the attention of the society at large by using social media as a tool to success. The paper starts with a survey of real issues confronting society today. The author believes that the world has reached a state of stagnation due to the lack of creativity. Creativity is no longer encouraged and the society, by and large has been confined to models that were created years ago.

In the simplest terms, cognitive ambidexterity refers to one’s ability to use the creative as well as rational hemispheres of the mind. It means the ability to function

Creativity leads to major inventions and breakthroughs rather than a standard environment of problem solving. Creativity helps finding new ideas rather than solutions to pre-existent problems. It creates a need thus leading to a blue ocean situation for the company. It introduces the concept of cognition and explains how thoughts are divided in the brain. The left side is concerned with facts and figures and the right with creative aspects of the mind. Over the years, four major quadrants of the brain were identified. Fig 1

These quadrants work in unison to give rise to thoughts. The brain has the innate ability to store memories and learn through past experiences. It is this aspect of the human mind that has led to the development and growth of mankind. The paper then goes on to explain the importance of being able to harness data from the four quadrants as and when needed in order to ensure success of an organization. It brings to light the various sources of learning and ideas such as dreams, experiences, emotions, emotional imagination, strategic imagination

Therefore, a leader must not only observe the external environment but also have an understanding of his/her own strengths and weaknesses.

Utilizing social media to make a mark

Efficient utilization of social media is the need of the hour among organizations today. With social network giants such as Twitter, Facebook, Whatsapp etc having the highest hit rates, the reach across these mediums is obvious. However, successful utilization of media is still a challenge. Over the years, very few companies have actually done it right but have achieved huge success through rightly utilizing social media. To better understand creative cognition, let us look at the following examples:

1. Kimpton Hotels came up with the concept of a social listening desk. The team’s main task was to keep an ear out for any customer experiences on the net and respond to any customer complaints. It helped the team deliver information to the hotel on current guest requirements and the hotel would provide that to the guests. This created the element of customer delight thus maximizing their customer retention. It used various channels such as google+, Twitter,