The Interconnected Individual

Introduction

The interconnected individual is personally meaningful to each of us. While our professional careers have each spanned over 40 years with different phases, roles, and expertise, neither of us started as connected, privileged individuals.

Certainly our fathers, who experienced the Great Depression and World War had neither the experience nor the contacts for either of us to be inducted into what C.S. Lewis in 1944 named “The Inner Ring”¹—those who have perceived status that others aspire to attain. Like many, we had to stumble through and discover how to navigate our own careers and acquire whatever guidance we could from mentors, colleagues, and inspiring authors such as Peter Drucker and Marshall McLuhan for Jeff, and Ludwig von ...