“But the best way to think out of the box is to look in other boxes. You search widely for elements that work, with an open mind about what problem you might actually be able to solve. It's discovery, not imagination, that makes you more creative.” - William Duggan
INTRODUCTION
I came across the mention of this book in a Twitter thread somewhere… I took a chance on a used copy and was very glad I did.
This little book neatly packs and organizes lots of ideas on the core topics of strategy, innovation, framing a problem, creativity & remixing - and more. All while making the case that:
- The unifying idea of this book is a common mechanism at the heart of outstanding achievements in every domain of human endeavor. I call that mechanism "strategic intuition” […]
- Behind every story of major advance is a turning point where someone has a useful idea that changes the field or starts a new one. [..] you seldom read about exactly where a new idea came from. But once you do, again and again you find strategic intuition.
THINK BETTER. BUILD BETTER.
I very occasionally send out an email recapping some thoughts, learnings and ideas typically centred around a thesis & approach I call being “FUTURENATIVE”.
In short, the thesis is about finding a unique way to leverage apparent tensions and blend both discovery & execution work, in order to unlock massive impact.
You can sign up here to learn more:
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- It's an open secret that good ideas come to you as flashes of insight, often when you don't expect them. It all comes together in your mind. You connect the dots. It can be one big "Aha!" or a series of smaller ones that together show you the way ahead.
- Expert intuition is always fast, and it only works in familiar situations. Strategic intuition is always slow, and it works for new situations, which is when you need your best ideas. As you get better at your job, you recognize patterns that let you solve similar problems faster and faster. That's expert intuition at work. In new situations your brain takes much longer to make enough new connections to find a good answer. The discipline of strategic intuition requires you recognize when a situation is new and turn off your expert intuition.
- the scientific method depends not on imagination but on discovery, through strategic intuition. You do not imagine the unknown. You discover it and make it known. And it turns out to be different from what you imagined.
- a breakthrough is part of both the past it came from and the future it starts, in the same way that a bend in the road serves as the end of one direction and the beginning of another.
- a selective combination of elements from the past makes something new. The elements themselves are not new.
- In other fields, we can usually recognize the equivalent of a scientific paradigm. In business we call it a business model. In art we call it a style. The military calls it a doctrine. In religion it's a belief system.
- Step I of the scientific method is: look in the laboratories of other scientists. Step 2 is your own experiments, or "experience" […] Step 3 is your reason. In the real scientific method, the hypothesis comes third, not first, as a product of your reason.
- So scientific advance does not come about by a leap of thought to a new theory, but rather from combining specific achievements that lead to a theory, which explains them. It's an act of combination, not imagination. Specifically, it's the selective recombination of previous elements into a new whole. Pieces of the past come together to make a new future.
- the "fragments in my head sorted themselves out in a new way" and "the pieces suddenly sorting themselves out and coming together in a new way."
- Kuhn explains in Structure that scientists do not know beforehand what problem they will solve. The problem and solution arise at the same time.
- You have to understand the original problem thoroughly for your mind to touch on all the pieces you need for the answer. It's just that you need to open your mind to other pieces from other problems, because those will combine for a new solution to a new problem. And that new problem is often quite close to the one you were working on.
- The combination of previous elements in a flash of insight is the essence of strategic intuition. […] a flash of insight gives you a goal and a course of action to reach it. Your goal is a hypothesis: you think it will work, but only the experiment-the course of action—will tell you for sure. That's why strategic intuition is strategic: the flash of insight gives you a strategy. […] strategic intuition to give you an idea and the experimental method to test it.
- But intelligent memory goes one step further: it makes intuition the creative part of all kinds of thought, including analysis. Strategic intuition projects intelligent memory into the future, as a course of action to follow, based solidly on the past.
- Deciding which task to do means setting a goal, and deciding how to do it means choosing a course of action. The result is a strategy. In intelligent memory this strategy comes from a flash of insight that brings past elements together in your brain.
- Expert intuition works fast, in familiar situations. Strategic intuition works more slowly, in new situations.
- Klein notes this pattern among experts in general. They do not set a goal first and then plan activities to reach the goal. Instead, the actions and goal come together: What triggers active problem-solving is the ability to recognize when a goal is reachable. ... There must be an experiential ability to judge the solvability of problems prior to working on them. Experience lets us recognize the existence of opportunities. When the opportunity is recognized, the problem solver working out its implications is looking for a way to make good use of it, trying to shape it into a reasonable goal.
- What good is expert intuition drawing elements from the past —when the future is unpredictable? If you automatically apply the past to the future, and the future is different, you're making a big mistake. That's where strategy comes in.
- You do not recognize the whole situation you face as familiar: you recognize parts of it. It's a new situation, but it's made up of pieces that existed before. The future comes from the past
- four steps how coup d'oeil happens: examples from history, presence of mind, the flash of insight itself, and resolution.
- Expert intuition relies on your own experience, while strategic intuition draws on the experience of everyone else in the world as well.
- The fourth step in coup d'oeil is resolution. This means resolve, determination, will. You not only see what to do: you also are ready to do it.
- In expert intuition you draw on what is in your mind about similar situations, while in strategic intuition you draw together selected elements from different situations in a new combination.
- Out on the open battlefield Napoleon would move his army from place to place, looking for a decisive point to win a battle. If he did not see a decisive point, he just kept moving. Along the way he passed many key objective points that the enemy assumed he was trying to take. The art of war consists, with a numerically inferior army, in always having larger forces than the enemy at the point which must be attacked or defended ... it is an intuitive way of acting which properly constitutes the genius of war? Napoleon wanted superior strength wherever he fought the battle. That was his decisive point.
- Patton put so many examples from history on the shelves of his brain that he could draw on them quickly. Expert intuition shades into strategic intuition: examples beyond his own experience become as familiar to him as his own experience.
- Many linear analytical methods try to predict the outcome of various business situations, But the real prize comes from nonlinear outcomes: disruptive changes that transform industries or create new ones.
- It fits how von Clausewitz. describes a coup d'oil: "the rapid discovery of a truth which to the ordinary mind is either not visible at all or only becomes so after long examination and reflection."
- Strategic intuition is an internal discipline of external inspiration. Your brain combines elements it takes in from outside you. The examples from history that a coup d'oeil combines come from that outside world. You connect to that world, as Buddha touched the earth. That grounds your coup d'oeil in reality. You let the examples from history flow into you, combine, and flow out as action that moves the world forward, and this action immediately becomes part of Karma, which you and everyone else take into account for the next moment of Dharma. When you follow the Way, Karma and Dharma are not in conflict. One flows into the other, on and on through time.
- "It wasn't that they sat down and said, 'Let's build the next great search engine.' They were trying to solve interesting problems and stumbled upon some neat ideas”
- when we study the details of each new bend in the road, we find that each strategist took elements from the past to make a new combination. Revolutionary change is evolutionary change, only faster.
- Steve Jobs explains further in another interview, this time for Wired magazine in 1996:
- Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things.
- The analysis you do gives you a deep understanding of the situation you face in your industry. It does not give you an idea for what to do about it. Strategic analysis is not the same as strategy formulation, for innovation or any other kind of strategy. Analyzing and strategizing are not the same thing.
- Strategic innovation is definitely decision making under uncertainty
- The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen, Creative Destruction by Foster and Kaplan, and The Strategy Paradox by Michael Raynor. These books all stress how creative destruction makes it difficult for a company to switch from current success in a declining business to uncertain success in a new business.
"Everything in strategy is simple, but that does not mean that it is easy." - Carl Von Clausewitz
- The word create has two meanings: to bring something into existence and to produce through imaginative skill.
- But the best way to think out of the box is to look in other boxes. You search widely for elements that work, with an open mind about what problem you might actually be able to solve. It's discovery, not imagination, that makes you more creative.
- To make more new combinations and to be more creative, you need to put more things on the shelves of your brain and free your mind to let them connect.
- strategy is about an unknown future, where we don't know the right answer until after the future unfolds. Even then we cannot measure whether another strategy would have done better because all strategic situations are different and we can't repeat the experiment.
- Learning past theories and examples prevents you from reinventing the wheel or from making the same mistakes as others who came before you. But those past theories and examples can't tell you what action to take in any particular situation.
- Albert Einstein's advice to a young scientist: "One must develop an instinct for what one can just barely achieve through one's greatest efforts."
- Progress in human affairs comes through opportunity, when someone sees it, seizes it, and turns it into reality.
THINK BETTER. BUILD BETTER.
I very occasionally send out an email recapping some thoughts, learnings and ideas typically centred around a thesis & approach I call being “FUTURENATIVE”.
In short, the thesis is about finding a unique way to leverage apparent tensions and blend both discovery & execution work, in order to unlock massive impact.
You can sign up here to learn more:
