Thinking about Thinking, Creativity, Innovation and Design
Classical Rational Policy Analysis and interactive policymaking are basically reacting to existing problems that, for some reasons, get "high on the societal agenda". However, a real innovative policy can only come about if policymakers redefine themselves as designers instead of reactive problem solvers.
Most end-of-the-year lists of books have the underlying message that “if you haven’t read these books, you are a cultural bar-bar, does not belong to the well-informed elite and not able to go along in conversations”.
Imagine, there would be stores that keep thoughts in stock and sell them. Make a mindmap where the branches reflect the various aspects of running a store. For instance: Explore: Make a connection between aspects of running a store and selling Thoughts to customers as items in a store. What did you learn about Thoughts? …
A business model is a plan for the successful operation of a business, identifying sources of revenue, the intended customer base, products, and details of financing. It tells the story around the kind of value the company wants to create. Facebook that has been rather negative in the news lately. It might be because Facebook has an almost …
In our Thinkibility nibble What Is An Interesting Book? we suggested that books with intellectual value should be categorized by the publisher into categories: Mainstream Improvement Criticism Provocation and Alternatives We propose a strong candidate for category 4: Provocation and Alternatives: The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness Subversive Dispels a …
We came across a great post by Michael Michalko we had like to share. Leonardo DaVinci’s grotesque heads and famous caricatures are an example of the random variations of the human face made up of different combinations of a set number of features. He would first list facial characteristics (heads, eyes, nose, etc.) and then …
Continue reading "A LEONARDO DA VINCI CREATIVE THINKING TECHNIQUE"
In 1968, Dick Fosberry won a gold medal in high jumping at the Summer Olympics. Instead of diving with his belly over the bar and landing on his feet, he did it reverse, jumped over the bar with his back and landed on his back. Nearly two thousand years since the Olympics in Athens, mankind invented …
Earlier in the post The Charm of Imperfection we wrote about figure-ground reversal or negative space: in art it is the space around and between the subject(s) of an image. Negative space may be most evident when the space around a subject, not the subject itself, forms an interesting or artistically relevant shape, and such space occasionally …
Continue reading "The Brilliant Failure Award – Thinkibility Nibble"
Normally we are asked to help people or teams to get ideas. Because they are stuck, running around in circles, blocked, don't have inspiration or are just not creative "by nature". However, in most of the cases they lack creative thinking tools by wich they can create deliberately alternative approaches or construct systematically breakthrough ideas. …
In an earlier post we republished Michael Michalko's The Difference between the way the average person thinks and a creative genius thinks" As Michael Michalko noticed that an average person focusses his attention on a specific information and excluding all else. In contrast, a creative genius sees the whole but would move from one detail …
Nowadays, innovation is very in fashion. As a person, you should be innovative (creative?). A product should be innovative to tempt you to buy it (why?). Research should be dedicated to innovations (instead of discoveries?). Or even worse, boards of directors feel compelled to proclaim a "year of innovation" or ask their employees for …
Classical marketing campaigns are mostly massive in nature, like the Napoleonic Wars. By using brute force and heavenly leaning on resources (people, money, gun power, logistics, management skills) they ty to win. Basically, both parties are in the same game, each trying to use better but more-of-the-same tactics. An alternative for the not so powerful …
A new adage is blowing around in the world of innovation. According to Wikipedia, The term "big data" often refers simply to the use of predictive analytics, user behavior analytics, or certain other advanced data analytics methods that extract value from data, and seldom to a particular size of data set. Analysis of data sets can find …
Continue reading "What Big Data, what information dominance?"
In 17th and 18th centuries England, France, and Spain contested the Dutch domination of world trade and the control over the seas and trade routes. After initial English successes, the war ended in a decisive Dutch victory. In 1667 Lieutenant-Admiral Michiel de Ruyter sailed up to the river Thames and attacked the British Royal navy …
We came across a booklet that could be a good example for the kind of studies by the envisioned Thinkibility University. At its West Wing, scientists dissect the basic thinking patterns in a scientific discipline. Siddhartha Mukherjee was asking himself: If there is a science of medicine, then science has laws. Physics has laws. Chemistry …
There are several ways to design a new concept deliberately. But what is a new concept? Not many people have a quick answer to this question, other than "differently than expected", "something else as normal", "not seen before" or just "interesting". One of the easiest ways to design a new concept is to escape from …
As an introduction to a series of blogposts about conceptual thinking we will start by paying attention to "ISH-Thinking". A concept is an abstract pattern in the brain that stands for some regular, recurrent aspect of the world, and to which any number of different words can be attached. Sometimes ago we already pointed out …
A surgical team in a hospital realised that their activities became more and more complex, partly because of the treatments that they were offering but also by an increase of the number of people involved. They looked for better ideas, outside their box of thinking. They visited an aircraft carrier, a pit stop at auto …
Continue reading "Where To Search for New Ideas? – Thinkibility Nibble"
This post is about patterns or logical bubbles in psycho therapy. As we will see there are some parallels with lateral thinking. There are several reasons why a person attends psychotherapy. Someone may attend psychotherapy because she is suffering because she thinks herself into a situation she doesn't want to be in. She visits a psychotherapist to …
Continue reading "I Am a Depressive Character – You’re Absolutely Right"
Recently we came across a handsome book by Jodie Newman called Business Creativity. In the chapter about Creative Toolkit, we found five tools that we clustered around the theme Change Point of View, because basically they come all down to the same principle. As we earlier pointed out each of us looks at the world …
Continue reading "Change a Point of View – Thinking Strategy"
