Long time ago, when they introduced me to the idea of Rubik’s Cube, I fell in love with it as most of us did. We tried to figure out how to solve it. We played day and night, at every school break at school trying to find out how to do it.
There was a kind of mystery during our trials. Other kids came to us with rumors that they had a friend who had a friend that had solved it and that they could provide us with the solution in exchange for some money.

We didn’t buy it. There wasn’t any honour in cheating.

When the first kid at school solved it he was a hero. He got a name among the mass. He got noticed among the crowd. His name was in our whispers, in our small talks like the one who had made it first.

The second got his place too. But as the people who solved it multiplied they didn’t get noticed anymore. The first though would have never been forgot.

When you are the first to do something you get noticed.

And Rubik’s Cube lost its glow!

Watching now the cube I see lost potential. I see more than 18 quintillion combinations but only 20 moves to solve it. So many wasted moves, isn’t it?

But not then. Back in the days to fill the 6 sides of the cube with a single color seemed amazing. Today it’s not what we want. Today we need diversity.

Today we have learned that there is not one single choice to deliver a product, to create tension, to do your work. Because there is no right or wrong, there is no mass that buys a product with a specific way of marketing.

Today we have choices. And every choice has its crowd. The people who love to swim in cold waters wearing a red hood gather every year in a specific coast in the Pacific ocean. There are those with the yellow cap and those with the purple one. And I am sure that there are more if you have time to waste to do the research.

Today people are connected with people who have different solutions, different answers to the same question. Today people create tribes, communities in a quest to find their way to the top.

Putting the colors in order on the 6 sides of a cube following a specific path is boring and serves nothing anymore. Even if you solve it no-one will notice anymore.

But what if we change the rules of the cube? What if instead of colors we put letters, and with every move on the cube the letters come together creating syllables? And from syllables we can create words and from words we can create stories. Different stories. Stories that many tribes want to hear . Or better, stories that can create new tribes.

What if instead of continuing to turn the wheel, we melted the cube before we put the colors in order? And as the cube is melting millions of multicoloured rivers stream in unknown destinations?

What would you do then? Having no answer, not one solution, no specific procedure to follow, just an infinite number of choices?

Here we are now. We are witnessing this melting of the old fashion way of living, of doing business of dealing with everything. As we are moving deeper in the connection economy we don’t create things but connections. We don’t deal with processes but with humans. And the only thing we can do to make the most of it is to make decisions to connect more, to be open and evolve ourselves to the mindset of the artist instead of workers, managers, directors, labourers.

Humans as never before have now the opportunity to use their skills to do something remarkable instead of generating money for nothing. Now you have a platform not a job. The new era pushes you to sustainability and not towards consumerism. You don’t buy because the marketer has convinced you to. You buy because you trust the brand, you trust the people in your tribe, and because you receive value.

The old ways are not working. The rivers of Rubik’s Cube are still unexplored and they need us to think like artists in order to explore them. To think out of the box, to be creative in a new way, to combine information, to connect and to deliver value.