Coming up with real break-through ideas is not easy and will require some training and experience. However, the trickiest part of an idea generation session is in its first phase: defining the focus. Defining the thinking task is the first task you should undertake when you are trying something like a "20 Minutes Idea Boost". …
A Thinkibility Challenge – what questions does not have an answer by search engines
In 10 research tips for finding answers online Danielle Thomson shared some of her best research tips to help you in those “why can’t I find this?” moments. One of them is this: There are no new questions. Have a research question? Trust me, it’s been asked before. Put your exact question into quotations as a …
Ish – Thinking – Thinkibility Boost
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 …
Questions about Questions
Always the beautiful answer Who asks a more beautiful question. E.E. Cummings The single most important habit for an innovative thinker may be to ask questions. A well formulated question stimulate and inspire. Questions leads to more questions and the question is why we focus so much attention on answering questions and so little on asking …
Change a Point of View – Thinking Strategy
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 …
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Innovation and Lucid Dreaming
Does the idea of conspicuously dreaming up the next innovation appeal to you? Does it sound tempting to build storm proof cities in your mind? Solve mathematical problems? Or simple find a creative solution to the dripping tap while you are consciously influencing your dreams? We spend around 6 years of our lives dreaming. Yet …
Trust or Trustworthiness? – Thinkibility Boost
Trust or Trustworthiness? When searching for ideas for our forthcoming book about Information & Feelings, a sequel to Positive & Negative in the serie Thinkibility – Thinking about Thinking, Creativity Innovation and Design we stumbled on a broad range of emotions and feelings. If you search this blog on keywords like emotion, feelings and intuition …
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24/7 Patterns of Activity – Thinkibility Boost
Our daily work, social and private life is regulated by patterns. Patterns that dictate what you do, where your are and who you encounter. It seems that these are shifting from an industrial pattern wherein people are locked in a 5 or 6 days working routine from 8 am to 6 pm, mostly nailed down …
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Visualisation – Thinkibility Nibble
Where do you search for ideas on reflection and ways to enhancing your awareness? How do you visualise the thinking steps to be taken to solve a problem? Mental as well as physical components make up a successful athletic performance and the last decades various techniques have been developed to mentally prepare athletes. Imagery is …
Making Thinking Interesting
Often it is stressed that we should be creative and search for alternative choices or possibilities. And seldom the interpretation of a phenomenon itself is subject to creative alternatives. In history, politics and news we follow mostly the elucidation as given by experts, journalists or opinion leaders. In organisations, we make “sense” of what is …
Focus on What Matters When it Matters
When it comes to living incognito among coral, the pygmy seahorse is the specialist. Coral reefs may be bright and spectacular but they are rough places to live, so animals often use camouflage to stay safe. Focusing the attention on what we are looking for may seem easy. We can easily multitask and search for …
Patterns in psychological research
Much, almost all psychological research has been conducted on students. It is for university professors the easiest way: students are at hand, no travelling required, students are cheap and available at convenient times, etc. I have never seen psychological research of elderly other than research related to mental problems of elderly. I never came across …
Assumptions about Critical Thinking
The skill of logical reasoning - independent thinking free from the influence of administrators, experts, journalists, parents - is highly valued in democratic societies. This is reason enough for the Thinkibility blog to investigate the logical bubble of critical thinking (logical reasoning is one component in critical thinking). We will use the Checklist Current Thinking …
Thinking Chess
We wish that you will have time and opportunity this summer to sit under a tree in a shadowed park on a languid afternoon. Maybe you will simply watch the clouds in the sky and reflect about life. We hope that you will also have time to reflect about thinking. Maybe you thought will drift …
Daily Thinking – Discovering Patterns
Daily Thinking - the thinking you do quiet effortless during the day - do have some features. In this blog we will point out some of the characteristics of Daily Thinking that differs from scientific or deliberate thinking. However, that does not mean in our opinion that Daily Thinking habits does not affect or have …
Left Out
Something missing? Well, you can safely assume that any information you are presented with has some relevant information “Left Out”. The originator's perspective, the logic bubble in which he perceives the world and how the information is applied are some possible reasons for the missing information. Also, we may unconsciously miss the presented information because …
Discovering Patterns
Thinking patterns help us to make sense of the world and they support our decisions and actions. A builder do not have to explore the structural calculations every time to build a roof, once he has learnt a certain pattern of how to build it, it makes sense to use it. The same pattern is …
Patterns in Organizational Design
Thinking Patterns, or logic bubbles, is one of the key concepts of breakthrough thinking. It is not easy to explicate thinking patterns in day-to-day thinking neither in scientific disciplines. That is why we will attention to this phenomena in some next blog posts, for example, psychology research, education, free press, 24/7 schemes and “daily thinking”. …
How Sure Are You?
What thoughts race through your mind when you hear the question, “Is that your final answer?” Are you a contestant with good metacognitive skills? Can you judge how sure you are that the answer is right? The skill to self-reflect and to know about yourself is a key to understand whether you just made a …
Focus the Attention for a LOOOONG Time!
Paying attention is a form of jogging. Jogging requires practice and training. And if you practice for a while, you may one day experience a feeling where time disappears. You are in a zone and feel like you could run forever. Flow, a coin termed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, means you are in intense absorption. Completely …
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