Think Wrong: How to Conquer the Status Quo and Do Work That Matters by John Bielenberg, Mike Burn, and Greg Galle, with Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson

Here we meet Sam Mockbee who was asked to set up a study abroad program for the architecture students at the University of Auburn. His breakthrough involved thinking “why does a study abroad program have to be abroad?” He set his program up in rural Alabama and went on to accomplish amazing things with his students.
Next is the story of David Batstone who’s book is Not for Sale: The Return of the Global Slave Trade and What We Can Do About It. Thanks to wrong thing, his group created REBBL, a health drink sourced from the Peruvian Amazon, which had been a source of human trafficking. Now the region has the economic security to get out of the human trafficking trap.

It’s easy to get stuck in a routine. There are times when you have to change your environment. Hotel conference rooms aren’t much of a change. Go to where the people and problems are that you are working on. Stay overnight or several nights if you can even if you have to couch surf. Putting yourself in the path of something new helps trigger the brain’s power of creativity. Human-to-human contact is invaluable. Go places, meet people, and tell stories when you get back to the office.

The status quo and accepted rules of thumb (heuristics) are the enemy of breakthrough ideas. We go with the familiar as something valid already exists. It also saves time, which always seems to be in short supply. Unfortunately, the same thinking is likely to produce the same results as opposed to better results. Brilliant answers often exist outside of conventional thinking. The drills here will help you consider problems in a fresh way. You need to generate as many ideas as possible. If only 3 out of 100 ideas will survive, you may come up empty if you only generate 10 ideas. Letting go is key to making significant change.

Making stuff puts physical form to the ideas in your head so you can understand them, share them, and quickly evaluate them. Think of this stage as rapid prototyping. Like Pixar, where they draw and conceive each film at least six times, you can rapidly go from one prototype to the next. Making is essential to understanding. It allows you to move from abstract thinking to something concrete. When things don’t turn out as expected, it’s not FAILURE! It’s discovery. Like jazz musicians, you can lose your inhibitions and become more creative in the act of making.