If I ask you to pick up a random tool and color, you will most probably answer red and hammer. This at least is the most commonly given answer. Whether this is the answer you gave or not doesn’t really matter. The fact is that our brain and memory create unique combinations and amalgams that sometimes can be quite unique.

Synaesthesia is a neurologically based phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. With other words, 2 or more of the five senses get mixed up. Synaesthetes can for instance smell music or see sound.

Synaesthesia can occur in many forms and is often used by the Synaesthetes to aid in their creative process. But what’s the relationship with entrepreneurship or having a high managerial position?

First of all I am no Synaesthete and therefore cannot fully grasp their daily perception; though there are particular ways to reproduce similar experiences. These can be induced by the use of drugs, hypnosis or through lucid dreaming.

Synaesthetes experience the world in a very different way because they create combinations no one else perceives. The hypothesis I want to develop is that there might be another kind of synaesthesia that does not get directly influenced by the senses but on the opposite, by our thoughts.

We all use metaphors and analogies to simplify our explanations or make them more visual. Synaesthetes do not just tell metaphors they actually live and experience them. They create links they cannot disassociate from that influence the way they gain insight. On the other hand we all use our lived and shared experiences to explain or interpret someone else’s explanation. It’s part of our learning process.

Entrepreneurs are usually resourceful people who possess a strong desire to succeed. They consider risk, luck and opportunity through a different prism. Moreover, organisations can be perceived as organic entities with their own nervous system. With other words, a company responds to internal and external stimuli the same way a human body does. We’ll discover more about the subject during future autopoiesis posts.

This brings me to believe that the CEO, who’s supposedly to be the main controlling part of the brain, could develop a synaesthetic perception of the organisation he runs.

Or are we just talking about Business acumen?

More to come in the next posts.