Calling the Island to you

Orienting ourselves, our careers and our businesses at the current time is at best confusing and at worst worrying. Our conventional methods - product design, market segmentation, channels - all seem to go awry, buffeted by the storms of geopolitics, platform technologies, attitudes to work and much else. It can often feel like some global game of whack-a-mole, running around trying to find the right customer, at the right price, in the right location, at the right time, even as they keep moving.

Perhaps there's another way. Long before Europeans were navigating the seas, Polynesians were making long journeys across oceans. They took a different view. They regarded themselves as stationary, and by paying close attention to ocean swells, bird flight, the stars and all manner of other natural phenomena, "called the island to them." (There is an excellent short paper here by Chelllie Spiller. Brought to my attention by Johnnie Moore)

We are educated, trained and encouraged to shape ourselv…