MIND OVER MATTER: PERFORMING THE ACADEMIC ENTERPRISE, SUSTAINING THE ENERGY AND COMMITMENT IN REVOLUTIONISING GLOBAL HIGHER EDUCATION
Patrick Oseloka Ezepue
UX Researcher | Former Professor of Statistics & Business Analytics
CONTINUING CONVERSATIONS ON GLOBAL CORPORATE ACADEMICISM FROM AN ILLUMINATING VIDEO
ONE AMERICAN VERSUS 250 ENEMY SOLDIERS
THE AUDACITY AND BRAVADO OF THE AMERICAN SOLDIER, LATE MAJOR AUDRIE MURPHY, IN THE VIDEO BELOW REMINDS US OF THE NATURE AND FEROCITY OF THE CORPORATE ACADEMIC BATTLES REQUIRED TO REFORM AFRICAN AND GLOBAL HIGHER EDUCATION?
Patrick Oseloka EZEPUE, PhD
User-Centred Research and Design, Statistics, Data Science, Business Analytics, Stochastic Modelling in Business and Finance, Digital Marketing, Entrepreneurship and The Digital Economy
AfriWorld Higher Education | Oselux Analytics Limited UK
Godfrey Udo, PhD
Real Estate, Investment Valuations, Entrepreneurship and Project Management
University of Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria
PREAMBLE
We have been working almost religiously since two decades on how to rejuvenate higher education and its impact in society. We share our insights on these goals regularly in different social media articles which we sometimes characterise as conversations on global corporate academicism. This article, probably for the first time known to us, discusses explicitly the 'Pyschologics' of the Corporate Academic Model, captured in the concept of Mind over Matter, which was mentioned by Professor Godfrey Udo (GU) in our conversations. We do this by using some metaphors from military careers.
MAIN PLAY
We remember having shared a view that corporate academic ways of working are pure theatre, fun and play, and almost work-hobbies which are imbued with the Entertainment Mystique. We regularly talk about Global Corporate Academicism as akin to the way celebrities in entertainment and sports enjoy their careers whilst earning fabulous living from them; see for example Ezepue (2023) The Corporate Academic Celebrity Business Model, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/369365373.
It seems alright to us to regularly explain that a Global Corporate Academic, as espoused in Ezepue (2018) Secrets of the Masters: Model-Based Hyper-Performance in the Corporate Academic Business of Life, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344576216, simply requires an academic to enact a managed multidisciplinary career. How?
By maintaining an intellectual identity in a Primary Research Domain (PRD), reinforced by some cognate Primary Application Domains (PADs) that see the academic intensely impacting four key areas of society - academia, public services, industry sectors, and wider society (the Global Quadruple Helix) - with these two primary domains continually nourished by voracious reading up of ideas in a General Cultural Literacy (GCL) programme. This third domain further develops the academic's capacities to excel holistically in Research, Integration of Knowledge (IoK), Applications, and Teaching, fondly called the RIAT Fabric in Higher Education.
We responsibly note that our choice of some heroics in World War II is only metaphorical and historical. Hence, we join the entire humankind in preferring a world in which conflicts are settled peacefully without recourse to war, and prayerfully remember all that paid the ultimate sacrifices in World War II and other wars, past and present.
THE CONVERSATIONS
ONE AMERICAN VERSUS 250 ENEMY SOLDIERS
THE AUDACITY AND BRAVADO OF THE AMERICAN SOLDIER IN THE VIDEO BELOW REMINDS US OF THE NATURE AND FEROCITY OF THE CORPORATE ACADEMIC BATTLES REQUIRED TO REFORM AFRICAN AND GLOBAL HIGHER EDUCATION?
In these conversations, Patrick Oseloka Ezepue is PE and Godfrey Udo is GU.
PE: 'The above quote was my initial reaction after watching the video clip'.
GU: 'As I watched this I could feel my weightless body moving through space. What is impossible in this world? Nothing'.
PE: 'Exactly my feelings too. Think about how his real battle successes more than compensated for his lack of academic credentials in being promoted to major. It suggests why mere academic degrees do not qualify someone for a RIAT Professorship, without commensurate achievements as a Full-Spectrum RIAT Excellent and Global Q-Helix Impactful academic. Hence, precisely why the IoK and A elements of the RIAT Fabric must count equally with the R and T in performing the academic enterprise the way Global Corporate Academics do'.
'Moreover, I agree with GU that this young soldier's exploits are a vivid demonstration of mind over matter. He basically lived the full life of a Lt General, say, in three years, earning every military honour in the books'.?
'I can't help seeing the tank he used in overcoming 250 enemy soldiers as analogous to The International Graduate Open University, https://icred7e.com, say, also called The Graduate University for Advanced Research and Enterprise Development, currently in beta form and awaiting content uploads, and other digital educational platforms in Oselux Global Education, see https://linktr.ee/ssgsacademy. There are so many analogies that link Major Murphie's heroics to that of PhDTechs and Global Corporate Academics. Just ten of his ilk can rout an entire army group, probably not as literally as this, but you can understand what I mean. The valour of a few brave souls with the know-hows to do the business they’re trained for, underpins uncommon achievement and excellence. For example, Global Corporate Academics are brave souls, by imbibing and living the Oselux Vision and the Corporate Academic Model espoused in Ezepue (2018)’s Secrets of the Masters: Model-Based Hyper-Performance in the Corporate Academic Business of Life, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344576216, and related publications'.
PE: 'When we work in Oselux, we're consumed with a similar level of mind energy which defies tiredness, boredom and lack of creative assiduity. Thank God that I chanced on the video which seems to convince me that we probably need only fifty (50) Global Corporate Academics to turn the Nigerian Educational System round and lift the country out of poverty in ten years. For Africa, given that Nigeria is roughly one fourth of the continent's population, we probably need only two hundred (200) Global Corporate Academics to serve as change agents and itinerant train-the-trainers, who are on the move crisscrossing the continent and planting departmental Centres for the Applications of Every Discipline (CfAEDs) in different higher educational institutions'.
DISCUSSIONS
Recall that these centres are the engine rooms for mass training of academics, students and professionals in the tenets of Global Corporate Academicism; for more on this new creed in higher education, please read
Ezepue (2024) Reforming PhD Training Purposefully, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/377922826,
Ezepue and Udo (2023) Conversations on the Tenets of Global Corporate Academicism: Corporate Academic Responses to a Nature Article on Burnouts and Quiet Quitting By Overworked, Sometimes Underappreciated and Underpaid Academics and Professionals, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/369063119,
Ezepue and Udo (2022) Conversations on the Seeming Uselessness of Traditional PhDs and Academic Papers: Corporate Academic Responses to the Question, 'Is Elon Musk Right in Saying that Most PhDs Are Useless? https://www.researchgate.net/publication/360550351.
Ezepue and Okaro (2023) The Many Faces of Publishing: Conversations on Global Corporate Academicism, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/370068626, and Ezepue (2023) The Corporate Academic Celebrity Business Model, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/369365373.?
领英推荐
Also, see more articles in LinkedIn, Medium, other social media and ResearchGate by tapping the tabs in https://linktr.ee/ssgsacademy.?The following key terms so far underpin this article. We use them as a compass for exploring the pyschologics of corporate academic work.
Model-Based Hyper-Performance; Managed Multidisciplinarity; The Corporate Academic Model (PRD, PAD and GCL Domains); RIAT Fabric in Higher Education; The Entertainment Mystique; Play and Fun in Performing the Academic Enterprise; PhDTechs; Mind Over Matter; The Psychologics of Global Corporate Academicism; Uncommon Achievement and Excellence; Mind Energy; Overcoming Tiredness, Boredom and Lack of Creative Assiduity; Oselux Digital Platforms; Nigerian, African and Global Educational Systems; Change Management.
Model-Based Hyper-Performance summarises what Global Corporate Academics, also called Full-Spectrum RIAT Scholars, do as they operationalise the Corporate Academic Model. We have argued incessantly in several articles some of which are mentioned here, that these academics leverage the three domains of the model in making circa thirty-one (31) contributions to knowledge, far more than five (5) typical contributions to knowledge made by traditional academics.
The expansive mindset that flows from Managed Multidisciplinarity which is innate in the model, accounts for this difference, in addition to a deeper worldview regarding the goals of higher education and related hyper-performance metaphors from sports, entertainment and the military. This world view is encapsulated in the Oselux Vision as follows.
To live a spirit-led, project-based life, transforming and democratising global education and change, by upskilling global citizens, creating innovative products, services, jobs, hybrid firms and wealth, and enhancing the peace, happiness and prosperity of individuals, teams, organisations, countries and continents, especially Africa and developing countries of the Global South, and publishing the results through multimedia, across academia, public services, industry sectors, and wider society [the Global Quadruple Helix].
This huge undertaking, though play, fun and pure theatre as explained above, calls for a winning mindset such as demonstrated by the young major in the referent video. This mindset is not only psychologically resilient but also requires some spiritual and metaphysical depths such as connoted in the Oselux Vision. We happily reveal that the centrality of the right mindsets on creative education motivated us to establish in The International Graduate Open University, a Graduate School of Divinities, Philosophy and Metaphysics of Knowledge Production, also called Graduate School of Philosophy for short.
In a sense, a Global Corporate Academic who is drilled in the skills mentioned in this article is somewhat supernatural, as discussed in Dr Joe Dispenza (2017) Becoming Supernatural: How Common People Are Doing the Uncommon, Hay House. See also other books by the same author all of which extend the psychology of winning which the referent video excites, especially the concepts of Mind Over Matter.
These texts and their purports for excelling in Global Corporate Academia are: You are the Placebo: Making Your Mind Matter; Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself: How To Lose Your Mind and Create a New One; and Evolve Your Brain: The Science of Changing Your Mind, all available at Hay House. We are satisfied that to be hyper-productive in the manner suggested in this article, it takes changing your mind from a single-discipline career focus as a traditional academic, to a managed multidisciplinary career played by Global Corporate Academics, whilst retaining your intellectual identity, your PRD.
It takes, if need be, changing your Primary Research Domain which defines that identity, as time progresses, in spurts of uncommon creativity, innovation and hyper-performance, that can't flow same ways from a linear and single-discipline career. See Ezepue (2018)'s Secrets of the Masters paper for several examples of some 100 Scientists who did this habitually, in a nonlinear multidisciplinary career style that was described fittingly as corporate academic for the first time in that paper. You can glimpse more insights on these winning attributes from related writings such as:
Anthony Robbins' Awaken the Giant Within, which magisterially explains what it takes to succeed in one's life-worlds (careers, financial, health, family and interpersonal relationships, say); Robert D. Smither (1994) The Psychology of Work and Human Performance, 2nd Edition, Harper Collins; Douglas A. Bernstein (1994) Psychology, Third Edition, Houghton Mifflin, a superbook on things psychology; Late General George S. Patton, Jr. (1947) War As I Knew It, Bantam Press, an unputdownable account of how wars are staged and won by, to us, one of the greatest commanding generals of his generation, from which we learnt the concepts of ferocity in war-like undertakings such as living the Oselux Vision, in his famous mantra - Attack, Attack, Attack, If In Doubt, Attack Again; Dr Carol S. Dweck (2017) Mindset: Changing the way you think to fulfil your potential, Robinson; Peta Lyn Farwagi (1998) The Life Balance Programme: A Powerful Strategy for Combining Personal Fulfilment With Career Success, Orion Books; Denis Waitley (1995) Empires of the Mind: Lessons to Lead And Succeed In a Knowledge-Based World, BCA Publishing; Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott (2016) The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity, Bloomsbury; Peer Senge et al. (2002) The Dance of Change: The Challenges of Sustaining Momentum In Learning Organizations, Nicholas Brealey, a text that is directly echoed by the metaphors in this article; the companion text to this, Peter Senge et al. (2021) The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies And Tools For Building A Learning Organization, Nicholas Brealey; and finally, for reinforcing the collective strategies immanent in all these references with deeper understanding of end users of RIAT results, the following two texts in User-Centred Research and Design - Michael Lewrick et al. (2018) The Design Thinking Playbook: Mindful Digital Transformation of Teams, Products, Services, Businesses and Ecosystems, Wiley and Ditto (2020) The Design Thinking Toolbox: A Guide To Mastering The Most Popular And Valuable Innovation Methods, Wiley.
Consequent upon the military performance metaphor summarised by General Patton's mantra and Major Murphy's uncommon bravado, we recall calling the entire Oselux Ecosystem of digital educational platforms a Corporate Academic Military Industrial Complex, in which there are thirty-one (31) potential contributions to knowledge that a Global Corporate Academic can make, compared to five (5) typical ones by a Traditional Academic. These contributions consist of seven (7) core academic contributions listed in the Oselux Research Methods Canvas (c) at https://afriworldpublishing.com, seventeen (17) affordances of the Oselux Vision, and seven (7) contributions attached to the Sevenfold Ways in Corporate Academia. The contributions are intimately explored in Ezepue and Okaro (2023) The Many Faces of Academic Publishing, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/370068626 and Ezepue (2023) The Corporate Academic Celebrity Business Model, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/369365373.
Looking again at the above key terms, we have explained concepts like The Entertainment Mystique, Play and Fun in Performing the Academic Enterprise. Intriguingly, a strange psychological trait among corporate academics is that they are literally performance artists in many senses. Their minds link their work to play and not really work; that is, they work but don't work as they joyfully play out the Oselux Vision.
Analogous to Major Murphy's zest for saving humanity by ending the war as depicted in the video, is the quest to live the Oselux Vision and support global citizens with the wherewithal for making a success of their lives and a difference in the world. This is the source of the kind of psychological motivation and mind energy that enable Global Academics to overcome tiredness, boredom and lack of creative assiduity, in producing the thirty-one (31) contributions to knowledge from their RIAT endeavours, thereby becoming full-spectrum RIAT excellent academics who are capable of making maximal impact across the Global Q-Helix - academia, public services, industry sectors and wider society.
Global Corporate Academics train different kinds of PhDs, called PhDTechs, which are truly useful and avoid the poor quality and low impact that characterise traditional PhDs, see Ezepue (2024) Reforming PhD Training Purposefully, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/377922826, a paper that examines the nature of RIAT professors, academics and professionals, all of whom are basically Global Corporate Academics. See also Ezepue and Udo (2022) Conversations on the Seeming Uselessness of Traditional PhDs and Academic Papers: Corporate Academic Responses to the Question, 'Is Elon Musk Right in Saying that Most PhDs Are Useless? https://www.researchgate.net/publication/360550351.
Given the performance distance between Corporate and Traditional Academics, as argued in the papers, we undertook since about 2003 to build an Oselux Ecosystem of digital platforms that will support the training of these star academics, students and professionals, including The International Graduate Open University, https://icred7e.com, as in https://linktr.ee/ssgsacademy.
These academics can impactfully use the instincts from the Oselux Vision to accelerate the achievement of the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and their domestication in different regions of the world, for example the African Union 2063 Agenda, a topic that will be expanded upon in subsequent articles.
SUMMATIVE KEY TERMS
To enable us cover the spirit and letter of this article in related capacity building events including corporate academic talks, we compile below all the key terms encountered in the article.
Model-Based Hyper-Performance; Managed Multidisciplinarity; The Corporate Academic Model (PRD, PAD and GCL Domains); RIAT Fabric in Higher Education; The Entertainment Mystique; Play and Fun in Performing the Academic Enterprise; PhDTechs; Mind Over Matter; The Psychologics of Global Corporate Academicism; Uncommon Achievement and Excellence; Mind Energy; Overcoming Tiredness, Boredom and Lack of Creative Assiduity; Oselux Digital Platforms; Nigerian, African and Global Educational Systems; Change Management; Corporate Academic Military Industrial Complex; Winning Mindset; Sevenfold Ways in Corporate Academia; 2030 UN SDGs; African Union 2063 Agenda; Oselux Frontiers
CONCLUSION
This article explored the winning mindsets, model, Vision and mantras that milk insights from 'The Audacity and Bravado of the American Soldier', late Major Audrie Murphy, in the referent video above. The article reminded us of the nature and ferocity of the Corporate Academic 'battles' required to reform global higher education, especially in Africa and developing countries of the Global South.
It was noted that about two hundred (200) Global Corporate Academics can transform African Higher Education and lift the continent out of poverty in a decade. This includes facilitating accelerated achievement of the African Union 2063 Agenda and similar adaptions of the UN 20230 SDGs in other regions of the world. In Oselux, we institute collaborations that will support these goals in different Oselux Frontiers - Africa and The Caribbeans, Middle East, Europe, Asia, India, China and Americas (US, Canada and South America).
Join the conversation on our different platforms and check out our forthcoming capacity-building events at https://linktr.ee/ssgsacademy.
Also, check out our World-Leading Masterclasses by downloading the below PDF with detailed schedule and registration information.
Additionally, we run highly innovative personal development courses in different Oselux platforms. These courses cover corporate academic skills generally on,
Life- and hyper-performance coaching, apprenticeships, internships, mentorships, academic support for prospective PhDTechs, other graduate XTech degrees, writing winning and high-tariff proposals, writing highly publishable papers, and circa 500 different skills sets,
and more technically in
User-Centred Research and Design, Statistics, Data Science, Business Analytics, Stochastic Modelling in Business and Finance, Digital Marketing, Entrepreneurship and The Digital Economy, Real Estate, Investment Valuations, Execution and Project Management, among other hot topics.
The courses are foreshadowed in intensive masterclasses but go beyond the masterclasses. They include in-depth online and hybrid courses, stand-alone workshops or those embedded in myriad international conferences, schools, summits, colloquia, and skills bootcamps.
For enquiries, please feel free to contact us at [email protected]. Also, take opportunity of training events we regularly publicise under different Oselux platforms.
It's inspiring to see the dedication to rejuvenating global higher education and discussing its pivotal role in society. ?? As Nelson Mandela once said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” Your conversation on the 'Psychologics' of the Corporate Academic Model truly embodies the essence of Mind over Matter. Speaking of making a global impact, we're excited to share an opportunity to be part of a Guinness World Record for Tree Planting - a noble cause that aligns with shaping a better future ???. For more details, feel free to explore here: https://bit.ly/TreeGuinnessWorldRecord
It's inspiring to see your dedication to reshaping global higher education! ??? As Steve Jobs once said, "The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do." Your exploration into the 'Psychologics' of the Corporate Academic Model truly embodies the spirit of innovation. Keep leading the way; the world needs thinkers like you! ????