Silicon Valley’s Counterculture Roots

While I doubt that the zen of business planning is going to work anytime soon — there’s some undeniable paradox in trying to work being in the moment with planning — there is something very powerful about zen that ends up adding to the allure of Presentation Zen, zen habits, and of course the original Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, among others. More recently, there’s Valley Zen, “at the intersection of zen and technology.”

I’ve had some email lately with Drue Kataoka of Valley Zen, for several reasons. First, I like that blog. Second, it introduced Alltop, which is good news for all. And third, I’ve had an ex-hippy connection to zen since I was in Haight-Ashbury in the late 1960s, which, as you might imagine, was a good decade before I became serious about business and entrepreneurship. And if there is any way to connect zen to business planning, I’d like to be the one to do it.

Drue’s quick answer to the ex-hippy zen MBA connection was a quick “look at today’s blog post,” which I did, and with that I discovered From Counterculture to ValleyZen, which is very much aiming at that same target. Synchronicity again, I suppose.

The post is built around a new book by Stanford professor Fred Turner, and an interview he did with Valley Zen. If you don’t see the YouTube video here, you can click the link above to see it on the Valley Zen site.