Thinking about Thinking, Creativity, Innovation and Design
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 →
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... Continue Reading →
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 →
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.... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
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 →
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... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
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 →
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 →
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 →
Some time ago Robert Sheldrake suggested ten dogmas of modern science. In a TEDx presentation he argued that science, by using a rigorous method, has become a belief system that has become the default in the scientific community and this system is based on reductionism and mechanical philosophy. This idea caused an uproar in the scientific... Continue Reading →
In earlier posts "Contradictions and Aggression" and "Don't Think You Can Think" part 1 and part 2 we did some thinking about contradictions, dilemma's and paradoxes. A special case of these are double binds. A double bind exists when an impossible ultimatum is put forward (either/or, however, both alternatives are unacceptable) two directives are in... Continue Reading →
As a follow-up of an earlier post about Reversals, we present here some more examples. A Reversal reverses the usual sequence or direction of doing something. For instance: Normally a product is delivered after the customer places the order. A Reversal could be that the customer places the order after the product is delivered. What ideas... Continue Reading →
In a Reversal the usual supposed cause-effect relation between objects or subjects are turned upside down. For example, it is supposed that the establishment of a permanent observation post increases the safety of recreational sailing. A Reversal could set up that the establishment of a permanent observational post rightly effective decreases the safety of sailors. The... Continue Reading →
Optical filters are devices that selectively transmit light of different wavelengths. They absorb some wavelengths of light – that is, colors – while transmitting others. Optical filters define what we see and what is left out. Key concepts and filters Key concepts do exactly the same with what we perceive. They strengthen or weaken information,... Continue Reading →
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Thinking about Thinking, Creativity, Innovation and Design
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