LinKS blog

By Jens Galatius

If you found Jerry Winds discussions on mental models at the lecture a Wharton or in his book “The Power of Impossible Thinhing” interesting, “On intelligence” by Jeff Hawkins is a must read.

Jeff Hawkins, the man who created the PalmPilot, the Treo smart phone and other handheld devices, has developed a powerful theory of how the human brains works.
The brain is not a computer, but a memory system that stores experiences on a way that reflects the structure of the world, remembering sequences of events and their nested relationships mad making predictions based on those memories. It is this memory-prediction system that forms the basis of intelligence, perception, creativity, and even consciousness, Jeff Hawkins proposes.
Hawkins theory goes hand in hand with Jerry Winds mental models; in fact Hawkins explains how mental models are created in the brain and how they in practise often replace what we actually are sensing. When reading “On intelligence” you get a better understanding of why the theory of mental models is so strong.
Jeff Hawkins: On Intelligence. ISBN 0-8050-7853-3
Read more about the book on: http://www.onintelligence.org/

By Jens Galatius

Talking about innovations it is a natural reaction to focus on the great innovations such as:

• The steam engine
• The water closet,
• Beogram 4000, (the one with the tangential arm)
• The paper clip
• The personal computer,
• Tetrapack,
• The Ipod,
• The mobile phone,
• And many other great innovations..

However, just a few of us actually have the capability, the chance, or the luck - to be around when great innovations happens. Great innovations have great impact – maybe that’s why we recognise them as great innovations?
I will however risk my neck arguing that it is all the small innovations that make the world turn, day after day. It is all the small innovations we do every day such as;

• Sorting the incoming mail in a new way that increases the productivity in the case handling with 30%.
• Changing the oil velocity in a hydraulic arm to make the movement less abrupt.
• Developing a standard operation procedure (SOP) in customer service to ensure a consistent quality, and a baseline for improvement.
• Creating a new strategy that conquers new market segments
• Etc.

That matters to most of us. These types of small innovations that many organisation does every day, improve the lives of the employees, saves valuable resources, creates new markets, protects the environment and boosts the profits have a tendency of going on below the radar screen watching for innovations.

However there seems to be a endless potential for small innovatons, if you nurture them by a stimulating environment, create a structure for recognising and develop the potentials of your employees and celebrating the inventors.

What are you doing in your organisation?

Share your thoughts and practise we us.

Six years ago I could have made the M&A exercise of my life. I sold my company in a spectacular transaction who made me a millionaire, at least on paper :-) Unfortunately my stocks where stocked in a “lock-up-period” and as you al know, the rest is history.

If I’ve had the knowledge then that I have today – especially after the presentation at Wharton by Habir Singh – the world would have been different. At least in my perspective. Some of the insights presented was “right on” – the idea on looking on the opponents upside instead of you own win, would have made a huge difference in the negotiations we had at the time.

Do you have any experiences your self? Please share.

Please listen to Mr. Singhs insights at tell what you think. (The file is 4,3 MB)

Arthur Cropley has done a marvellous paper on divergence vs. convergence thinking– “In praise of convergent thinking”, where he has some interesting observations.

Convergent thinking is oriented towards deriving the single best (or correct) answer to a clearly defined question. It emphasizes speed, accuracy, logic, and the like, and focuses on accumulating information, recognizing the familiar, reapplying set techniques, and preserving the already known. It is based on familiarity with what is already known (i.e., knowledge), and is most effective in situations where a ready-made answer exists and needs simply to be recalled from stored information, or worked out from what is already known by applying conventional and logical search, recognition and decision-making strategies.

One of the most important aspects of convergent thinking is that it leads to a single “best” answer, and thus leaves no room for ambiguity: Answers are either right or wrong. IQ tests are frequently regarded as epitomizing convergent thinking. Divergent thinking, by contrast, involves producing multiple or alternative answers from available information. It requires making unexpected combinations, recognizing links among remote associates, transforming information into unexpected forms, and the like. Answers to the same question arrived at via divergent thinking may vary substantially from person to person but be of equal value. They may never have existed before, and are often thus novel, unusual or “surprising”. Sometimes this is true merely in the experience of the person producing the variability in question, or for the particular setting, but it may also be true in an absolute sense.

Which kind of thinking do you practice, do you motivate in your organization? When do you see it is nessesary to be divergent/convergent?

However, contrary to what is sometimes assumed, both convergent and divergent thinking lead to production of ideas. None the less, there is a major qualitative difference: Convergent thinking usually generates orthodoxy, whereas divergent thinking always generates variability; otherwise it would not be divergent.

Read more……