Innovative Thinking and Strategy in Practice: Reading Notes on Lateral Thinking
After reading through and organising lateral thinking, Six Thinking Hats, 635 Brainwriting, SCAMPER, Brainstorming, and design thinking, the biggest thing I got out of it was not a few more management or creativity tools. It was that I started to understand “thinking” itself as something that can be deliberately designed. In the working environments I have been in, from the boss on down, the decision-making style I know best is direct and fast. When a problem shows up, a small number of decision makers quickly pick a direction. If something can be done, do it first, then use the actual results as feedback and keep correcting and iterating. The advantage of this approach is obvious: speed. In product, engineering, and software development environments especially, as long as the cost of a mistake is low, the decision is reversible, and market or user feedback comes back fast enough, acting directly beats spending a lot of time in discussion. Many questions only get answered by doing, and over-analysis can actually reduce efficiency. ...