The primitive brain
There are many lateral thinking puzzles out there and I'm sure many of them are familiar to people interested in innovation management. Here's one that I have used quite a lot from the founder of the Destination-Innovation Web site:
"A man has a business where he buys chairs for $5 and sells them for $4 and becomes a millionaire. How come?" (This one always produces come interesting solutions. If you want one possible answer, go to the bottom of this post.)
This type of question reminded me of a couple of sentences that I saw years ago to show how schema can affect our reading comprehension. Read these sentences. Who's speaking? What are you imagining? You can get the endings at the bottom of the page:
A: "She was your typical blonde, she kept her nails . . . "
B: "Barrabus came by sea . . . "
So what's the point of using stuff like this? They can illustrate very clearly that our existing mental models/assumptions can be way off the mark -- miles off, and prevent us from solving today's complex problems. Another danger is equating experience and expertise with being right. And worse, equating confidence with being right. Have you ever noticed that all those talking heads on financial news channels talk with such confidence and, yet, at the end of the day, they don't really know what the hell is going on any better than the next man. Suit, loud voice, MBA and you've got it all figured out.
This is why I like Richard Branson so much: long hair, soft spoken, a little bit scruffy and not taking himself too seriously.
There's one more. Ignoring the lessons of history. Together, we have the toxic three: 1) confidence in lieu of substance 2) over emphasis on expertise and 3) an aversion to the lessons of history.
Answers:
The man had previously been a billionaire. [We assume that becoming a millionaire is a bottom-up process.] Of course, with today's stock markets being so low, a top-down path to having a million makes perfect sense.
A: ". . . all neatly lined up in jars in her basement."
B: ". . . his feathers were so dirty and ruffled after the long trip." [The text was taken from a young girl's diary about her canary arriving at the new family home in another country.]
Got any other good lateral thinking puzzles?
[Link]: The Economist writes about America and innovation.
"A man has a business where he buys chairs for $5 and sells them for $4 and becomes a millionaire. How come?" (This one always produces come interesting solutions. If you want one possible answer, go to the bottom of this post.)
This type of question reminded me of a couple of sentences that I saw years ago to show how schema can affect our reading comprehension. Read these sentences. Who's speaking? What are you imagining? You can get the endings at the bottom of the page:
A: "She was your typical blonde, she kept her nails . . . "
B: "Barrabus came by sea . . . "
So what's the point of using stuff like this? They can illustrate very clearly that our existing mental models/assumptions can be way off the mark -- miles off, and prevent us from solving today's complex problems. Another danger is equating experience and expertise with being right. And worse, equating confidence with being right. Have you ever noticed that all those talking heads on financial news channels talk with such confidence and, yet, at the end of the day, they don't really know what the hell is going on any better than the next man. Suit, loud voice, MBA and you've got it all figured out.
This is why I like Richard Branson so much: long hair, soft spoken, a little bit scruffy and not taking himself too seriously.
There's one more. Ignoring the lessons of history. Together, we have the toxic three: 1) confidence in lieu of substance 2) over emphasis on expertise and 3) an aversion to the lessons of history.
Answers:
The man had previously been a billionaire. [We assume that becoming a millionaire is a bottom-up process.] Of course, with today's stock markets being so low, a top-down path to having a million makes perfect sense.
A: ". . . all neatly lined up in jars in her basement."
B: ". . . his feathers were so dirty and ruffled after the long trip." [The text was taken from a young girl's diary about her canary arriving at the new family home in another country.]
Got any other good lateral thinking puzzles?
[Link]: The Economist writes about America and innovation.
posted by Gordon Graham at 9:42 AM
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