By Lara Levin
Student Writer
Continuing its Series on Sustainable Innovation, USC Annenberg invited Dr. Sidney Harman, chairman and founder of Harman International Industries, to offer his insight on how to foster leadership and innovation, as drawn from his notable successes as a pioneer and leader in the areas of government, industry and education.
Dean Ernest J. Wilson III introduced Harman, recently named the first Judge Widney Professor of Business at USC, as an innovator whose “ideas cross the borders” of all disciplines. Wilson noted that this distinguished guest was the type of person with whom one could intend on holding a 20 minute conversation and find himself still engaged over an hour later, with “answers to questions one would never think of.”
With that, Harman began by citing a quotation by the “unpredictable and thoroughly wonderful poet” Robert Frost, who claimed that the human brain is an astonishing instrument—it turns on automatically when we get up in the morning and it turns off when we get to the office.
“Well,” said Harman, “I doubt Robert Frost ever visited USC.”
Harman recognized the type of non-linear and outside-the-box thinking done at USC as the type of thinking that will usher in a new era of dynamic leadership, unlike what has become common among the high ranks in government, industry and education.
“The vast majority of big shots in those three fields think and manage the same way. They manage the way they think; they think the way they manage—top down, linear, sequential, synchronous—and it’s wrong,” Harman explained. “There is developing a new way of thinking in this world that may be epitomized by someone we are fortunate to have elected as president—a way of thinking that is asynchronous, that thinks in terms of patterns, in terms of multiple disciplines and the interrelationships of those disciplines.”
Harman went on to attribute this kind of thinking to that which characterizes every consequential leader he has encountered in his broad and enduring career. This leadership, he explain, does not appear out of “spontaneous combustion,” but rather out of a significant and dedicated investment in self-development.
“Investing in yourself, I suggest, ought to be the life work of each of us,” Harman advised, proposing that the practices of reading and writing and the development of critical judgment are essential aspects of this investment.
Writing, Harman explained, is one of the greatest secrets to the fields of industry, government and education. “It is widely thought that writing consists of transferring stored intellectual inventory from the mind to paper, but writing is discovery. I read to learn and I write to discover what I know.”
This focus on reading, writing and a critical exploration of arts and culture, and perceiving these art forms as “more than just decoration” is, according to Harman, the key to the progressive and innovative thinking that will mold the future leadership in all fields and across all disciplines.
“Innovation is a crucial aspect of the developing modern leader,” Harman concluded. “But innovation does not arise out of spontaneous combustion. Innovation is invariably the consequence of the field made fertile by the exercise of the mind, by the combination of such things as reading and writing.
“I would like to correct an assumption that has characterized every society back to the early Greeks—the assumption that somehow with aging comes wisdom. Instead, I propose that with age comes the opportunity for wisdom through exercising your mind, and there is no better way to come to leadership than through this exercise.”
