IN CLIO'S CAUSE:
If Columbus Were Still Around
• • •
by James W. Kinnear
In this corner, we look from time to time at the uses of history. There is a school of thought which says one shouldn't seek "uses" for history. But we hold that history does indeed have uses-we' ve just got to steer clear of doctrinaire "lessons" and look to the thing itself, the actual experience. NMHS is seeking fresh approaches to our mission of bringing people to history. Here, Mr. Kinnear, President and CEO of Texaco Inc., sees intense usefulness in the legacy ofColumbus. In a James W. Kinnear brief essay that appeared in various newspapers on Columbus Day, OctoThis fundamental curiosity breeds ber 12, last year he gives his perspective independent thinking, the ability to come on Columbus's voyage of 1492-and at a worn problem with a fresh perspecTexaco's reasons for sponsoring the tive. A curious mind sees and grasps all Columbus ships now being outfitted in sorts of adventures and it delights in exSpain. ploration and discovery. In a world that If Christopher Columbus were alive today, I'd hire him . True, he hadn't even started on an MBA when he set sai l from Spain, and hi s sense of geography left something to be desired, but I'd hire him. Here 's why. While a lot of young people have yet to understand the connection between education and good employment prospects, others have understood it all too well. The phrase that played in the 1960s,
A curious mind ... delights in exploration and discovery. "To get a good job, get a good education ," has, in the 1980s become, "The goal of a good education is to get a good job." With a respectable business diploma clutched in one hand , and volumes about market share, accounting procedures and managerial motivation in the other, these would-be tycoons alight on interview chairs, sure that the next step will be a seat on the board of directors. My question: All right, so you understand how business works, what else do you have to offer the world? The silence hangs in the air like 100 percent humidity. But it is preci sely the question that business needs to ask these days. You see, the prime benefit and goal of education is, or ought to be, the development of a deeply held curiosity about the world. Education gets us to asking questions like: Is that true, and if so why? What took place then which is influencing what is going on now? What happens if I try this approach? What happens if I sail west? SEA HISTORY 53, SPRING 1990
demands innovation and the opening of new frontiers , American business needs people who have developed this intellectual vigor, and who can think about the challenges of business in ways the textbooks have not even suggested. That 's just what Columbus did-and why for me his discovery of the Americas captures that infectious curiosity most completely. It is also one of the reasons Texaco will sponsor the quincentenary tour of the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria replicas in 1992. Utterly convinced that by going west he could find his way to the riches of Asia, Columbus pestered heads of state all across Europe until he found one willing to invest in his highrisk ideas. The result of his perilous gamble was failure-he didn't even come close to Asia. But as so often happens, the willingness to launch into uncharted waters resulted in unexpected discovery and rewards. People who are all business are like those 15th century merchants who knew well the overland trade routes to Asia. They go looking for Asia, and sure enough, they find it every time. But I have become interested in people for our business who have a high regard for the value of what we do, and who are competent in their field, but who bring us a lively intellectual curiosity that is willing to pole and prod and press, and occasionally, to sail west. Often these people have explored continents seemingly unrelated to business-art or journalism, law or philosophy. But because they are multidimensional , they bring to their work a sense of adventure, an inquisitive vigor. William Allen White, the journalist,
once wrote in the Kansas City Times: "In education we are striving not to teach youth to make a living, but to make a life." Executives and educational policy setters could profit from that advice. Yes, I'd hire Columbus any day. He understood leadership, risk-taking, politics, finance and marketing. But beyond that, he also had conviction and curiosity enough to sai l west when all the world was trudging east. If American business is to succeed in the New World of the 1990s, this is a lesson in people we must learn all over again. O
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