Central to the very concept of the Void is creativity . The core dynamic of the universe is creation of the new, destruction of the old, to be replaced by new creation.

Indeed, referring back to the previous discussion of ‘Place’ and Kyoto, Yagi observes in his Chap. 7, that, in parallel, the culture of Kyoto has, for 1200 years, been characterized by a repetition of creation and revival. Many traditions and heritages remaining in Kyoto today are the living evidence of a past which has transcended time—a traditional culture with memories of fusing Eastern and Western Cultures. The ‘Festivals’, commonly practiced in Kyoto, are central in revivification of this traditional spirit. However, “people, objects or matters, keep on evolving with the times.”

There is thus a close connection between spirituality and creativity …. and place … as argued by Stomu Yamash’ta in Chap. 10, and by Tadashi Yagi in his Chap. 7. Yagi points to the redevelopment of the concept of “space” to the idea of “resonance field” in Chap. 15 to explain the mechanism of innovation creation. Paradigm shifting innovations are nurtured in a resonance field that is defined by the place of the emergence, and stimulated by the interaction among people with different knowledge and experiences. Most importantly however, emotion is central to creation.

This observation immediately takes us in our quest for change from spirituality and the cosmos into the inner world of the person. Yamash’ta and Yagi further develop this argument in Chap. 13. Six “senses ”, they argue, play crucial roles in improving the value of creativity—design, story, symphony, empathy, play, and meaning. All derive from “right brain” activity which controls emotion and holistic understanding, thus the genesis in emotion, as opposed, to linear logical brain activity. Creativity is directly associated with well-being, and being able to see how to change things—moving beyond established explanation. As Albert Einstein observed of the importance of creative enterprise,

We cannot solve problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

The act of creation involves ‘connecting the dots’—identifying order out of chaos, discovering connection between seemingly unrelated things. This too is the most significant base for humor … and, of ‘letting go’ so we can enjoy a new vision of the ‘same-old’ world. It is within this laterally explored new world that we can let go of the material things and fixed beliefs which constrain our exploration, and search the non-material Void. Meanwhile, as Yamash’ta and Yagi observe in Chap. 13, creativity is cultivated by the accumulation of high-quality emotional experiences and knowledge—such as feeling the beauty of nature and enjoying art performances.

Most importantly, as demonstrated throughout this book, and specifically, in the introduction to this present Conclusions Suite, we have to change things, in particular to break out of the cement cast that neo-classical economics has hardened over our society and future. We cannot leave this task for a ‘creative elite’, but need to build a society and organizations where this is the ‘norm’ of daily activity and purpose.

A healthy society is a participative society, not one ruled from elsewhere by either a political or expert elite—particularly from the distance of globalized economic control. As demonstrated, in particular, by Stephen Hill’s Chaps. 2 and 17, the result is dependency , inability to feel in control and therefore valuable, and paralysis of taking the action required to escape the situation. “Necessity is therefore the mother of invention” as Yamash’ta and Yagi observe in Chap. 13, but, as dependents on the ‘system’ the people are incapable of finding and holding on to the reins of transformation to deal with what must be done.

As Yagi and Yamash’ta further argue, a central quest of this Book is to identify the optimal economic and social system for producing the fabric of a creative economy.

At the level of international action, the 2004 UNESCO initiative to promote a “Creative Cities Network” promotes multiplication of art, music and other domains of creative expression as the desired creative norm of the overall society, or city, or community. This community creativity design does fundamentally enrich the life and satisfaction of the people as a whole.

BUT, this is not enough. Whilst an emphasis on creative industries, art, music, culture and so on, attaches emblems of activity to the fabric, what matters is weaving the overall fabric as a whole—producing a creative and responsive society.

This objective therefore does not just imply fostering creative activities, conducted and presented in separate organizational domains and to separate audiences. Instead, it implies building creativity rather than rote learning into the education of children, fostering creativity across physical science and humanity domains in subsequent education—in particular at the postgraduate research level, building physical spaces that encourage connection and creative engagement into the architectural design of everything from city design to offices to local communities, and fostering government policy that rewards creativity and new enterprise—in particular, for the general social good rather than just commercial profit.

Yamash’ta and Yagi point to the economic benefit, even as measured by correlation of the World Competitiveness Yearbook (WCY) Index and the Global Competiveness Index (GCI), which, combined, produced the ‘National Quality Competitive Index (NQCI) all developed by the World Economics Forum from a wide range of indicators. The main factors that determine national competitiveness were innovation capability and infrastructure capability for innovation—building a creative economy and society, not just promoting separate creative and arts activities. In the context of demonstrated economic advantage however, Yamash’ta and Yagi argue that innovation needs to be directed towards improving society rather than profit making as such. They refer to the Aga Khan Foundation as example. The Foundation has implemented innovative developments by organizing communities since the 1970s—a model of participatory rural development which combines development principles with a community’s specific context and needs in a flexible manner. The authors therefore reinforce the importance of paying attention to underlying societal factors in sustaining creativity.

Again, though, let us remember, as Yamash’ta and Yagi remind us in Chap. 13, the source of creativity lies with the individual, their emotions and lateral exploration. They point particularly to the role of art, always seeking to capture—and generate—the emotions of individual human beings, joy, anger, pain, and connectedness.

Our creative capacity is severely constrained however, when we get caught up in the world of the material, the quest for immediate selfish advantage and material rewards ………the very platform for neo-classical economics.

But, bringing this quality forward and nurturing creativity is a social organizational task . Yamash’ta and Yagi particularly, demonstrate the importance of the personal inter-subjective relationship within these organizational arrangements in their Chap. 14—not one of ‘contract’ but one of trust. Yet again, a neglected dimension of Western-inspired business and its neo-classical economic base. Counter to most Western business practice, trust rather than contract is most commonly the relationship for doing business in many Eastern countries, where previous traditional ways of relations have resisted the international onslaught of the cold litigational heart of neo-classical economics. Instead, Eastern business or commitments often rely on a handshake. To carry this further, trust is a basic dimension of the social capital Footnote 1 that provides serious social wealth to a group or society. As defined by one quoted author,

Social capital consists of the features of social organization, such as networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit.

Indeed, it is important to note that even at the front-end of institutionalized creative activity globally now, i.e.: scientific research, openness , and therefore trust, now seems to rule the international research community, not closed institutional boundaries to protect self-interest, and to prevent new good ideas to escape whilst protecting possible self-interested patent rights (Hill 1993; Hill and Turpin 1994, 1995). Indeed, it is inter-subjectivity and mobility of scientists, carrying with them their ‘tacit’ knowledge gained from experience (observed by Yagi in Chap. 15), that most matters in developing new major initiatives and networks within the scientific community—not internet, nor citation allegiance, and not immediate selfish protection of one’s own or corporate-endorsed ideas. Hill and colleagues’ own research to demonstrate this included a survey with results from 10,132 scientists, 8008 of whom were from the Asia-Pacific area (Hill and Turpin 1995; Turpin et al. 2008; Woolley et al. 2008).

Yagi, in his Chap. 15, observes that these same principles apply to creative organization in general. ‘Open Systems’ , network organization and autonomous actors are central principles. Decentralized organization allows rapid response to organizational change.

Careful balance is also necessary however against poor decision location and control. Decentralized organization can lead to lack of discipline in following the overall organization’s objectives, so hierarchical monitoring and assertion of a central vision, can also be important. What matters is full participation, not centralized command.

Yamash’ta and Yagi demonstrate in their Chap. 13, the importance of code, icon and symbol as means of transferring tacit knowledge, and this applies well in the realm of wider and more anonymous society. However, contemporary scientific relations are not just passing on tacit knowledge, but at the same time, building creative new explorations and resolutions. … it is the inter-subjective quality of communication that appears to matter more in the case of building scientific relations and creativity.

Back to the power of the individual and intuitive knowledge—at the forefront of global change.

Back to the individual and their emotional life.

Back to the non-material Zero and Void of the creative cosmos.

Again, creativity and its organization require open boundaries of the organization, sharing within, trust, not self-interest ………….back to the personal bases of creativity, but now cast into organization and cross-organization domains. Critical, and oft-neglected managerial lessons follow—lead with vision rather then hierarchical control, build autonomous teams, nurture rather than demand!

Creativity and its organization also imply quite different regimes for training in general, and in particular, post-graduate experience. Still, most universities teach science and engineering in isolation from the humanity and humanities courses that lie alongside, but way across the other side of the disciplinary quadrangle, unknown and unexamined.

Yamash’ta and Yagi, in their Chap. 13, therefore promote the idea of bringing engineers into direct contact with art during the course of their training. They present the recently-founded University of Aalto in Finland as a best-practice example—particularly, in promoting design and design processes into the strategic development of Finish companies.

Resistance to this widening of education experience for inclusion into the ‘left-hemisphere’ disciplines, goes further. Rarely are the science and engineering graduates adequately prepared for the organization world into which they are about to transfer as they have little or no training or disciplined experience of the social/emotional dimensions of working with others creatively across knowledge boundaries, or crossing the cultural divide between academia and industrial or commercial life. The lesson of C.P. Snow and his depiction of the separation between the “Two Cultures”—humanities versus the sciences (Snow 1959),Footnote 2 remains unaddressed even though Snow’s illuminative observation was originally made 60 years ago.

Herbert Marcuse warned us 47 years ago of the immediate danger,

The industrial society which makes technology and science its own is organized for the ever more effective domination of man and nature, for the ever more effective utilization of its resources. (Marcuse 1970, p46).

To which Rachel Carson’s observation six years earlier circles us back to the importance of the person, and the ‘human’ side to natural science.

Man’s attitude to nature is today critically important simply because we have now acquired a fateful power to alter and destroy nature. But man is part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself. (Carson 1964).

However, since the time when Carson and Marcuse wrote, subsequent progressive expansion of disciplinary specialization and concentration on (left-brain) logic on the ‘one’ side of the cosmic ‘one-zero’ equation, has dominated, as has the eviction of the ‘ holistic experiential person’ out of the knowledge apparently required by neo-capitalist economics where the anonymous objective of profit rules.

Indeed, under the current world-wide trend of university management, Presidential or Vice-Chancellorial CEOs generally rule, not knowledge leaders; profit outdistances knowledge as criterion of excellence; and universities are judged by an honor list contrived from KPIs or key performance-indicators—abstracted and partial criteria that can be quantitatively presented. As attractors to fee-paying students, this abstract quantification abides by the rule of neo-classical economic competition. Courses have increasingly been targeted to specific job-related skills rather than wider knowledge, reflection and creativity development. … and ‘knowledge’ gained or transmitted, appears secondary.

Some University Presidents have the vision to escape this neo-classical economic trap, but not many. In their hands, however, lies the future.

Consequently, knowledge creation and training to produce it for the world’s future is largely entrapped within the demands of neo-classical economic advantage… and, therefore, prestige and salaries of the CEO’s, now measured against leading corporate executives and in their million dollar territory, rather than the Professorial and other senior knowledge-focused academics over whom their ‘executive system’ rules.

Knowledge for our future ‘escape’ is therefore deeply trapped within the limiting grasp of neo-classical economics. Whilst the Void is glimpsed at the end of quantum and cosmic physics mathematics, its significance for humanity and ‘living now’ is entirely neglected … or, rejected, as far as economic analysis is concerned.

This has to change if we are to survive!