Table Of ContentCopyright © 2001 by Michael Michalko All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of the
Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
www.tenspeed.com
Ten Speed Press and the Ten Speed Press colophon are registered trademarks of Random House,
Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the publisher eISBN: 978-0-
30779036-1
v3.1_r1
Dedicated with love to my mother,
Frances Busten Michalko,
who is the rose in the garden of my life.
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: Seeing What No One Else Is Seeing
Strategy One: Knowing How to See
Strategy Two: Making Your Thought Visible
Part II: Thinking What No One Else Is Thinking
Strategy Three: Thinking Fluently
Strategy Four: Making Novel Combinations
Strategy Five: Connecting the Unconnected
Strategy Six: Looking at the Other Side
Strategy Seven: Looking in Other Worlds
Strategy Eight: Finding What You’re Not Looking For
Strategy Nine: Awakening the Collaborative Spirit
Afterword
Bibliography
Contact the Author
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It’s an author’s practice to acknowledge the many people who have
assisted with the development of the book. And many people have
helped me. However, this time around, I would like to acknowledge, in
print, the one person who has helped me most, not only with this book,
but in life as well. I would like to thank Pat Lehman of Marco Island,
Florida, for her wit, wisdom, and faith, who, among many other things,
taught me that my reach should exceed my grasp for, as Pat puts it, what
else is heaven for?
INTRODUCTION
How do geniuses come up with ideas? What is common to the
thinking style that produced Mona Lisa and the one that spawned the
theory of relativity? What characterizes the thinking strategies of the
Einsteins, Edisons, da Vincis, Darwins, Picassos, Michelangelos, Galileos,
Freuds, and Mozarts of history? What can we learn from them? The goal
of this book is to describe these thinking strategies and show how we
can apply them to become more creative in our work and personal life.
For years, scholars and researchers have tried to study genius by
giving its vital statistics, as if piles of data somehow illuminated genius.
In his 1904 study, Havelock Ellis noted that most geniuses are fathered
by men older than thirty, had mothers younger than twenty-five, and
were usually sickly as children. Other scholars reported that many were
celibate (Descartes, Galileo, Newton) and that others were fatherless
(Dickens) or motherless (Darwin, Marie Curie). In the end, the piles of
data illuminated nothing.
Academics also tried to measure the links between intelligence and
genius. But intelligence is not enough. Marilyn vos Savant, whose IQ of
228 is the highest ever recorded, has not contributed much to science or
art. She is, instead, a question-and-answer columnist for Parade
magazine. Run-of-the-mill physicists have IQs much higher than Nobel
Prizewinner Richard Feynman, whom many acknowledge to be the last
great American genius (his IQ was a merely respectable 122).
Genius is not about scoring 1600 on the SATs, mastering ten languages
at the age of seven, finishing the New York Times crossword in record
time, having an extraordinarily high IQ, or even about being smart. After
a considerable debate in the sixties, initiated by J. P. Guilford, a leading
psychologist who called for a scientific focus on creativity, psychologists
reached the conclusion that creativity is not the same as intelligence. An
individual can be far more creative than he or she is intelligent, or far
more intelligent than creative.
Most people of average intelligence, given data or some problem, can
figure out the expected conventional response to the problem. For
example, when asked, “What is one-half of thirteen?” most of us
immediately answer six and one-half. You probably reached the answer
in a few seconds and then turned your attention back to the text.
Typically, we think reproductively, on the basis of similar problems
encountered in the past. When confronted with problems, we fixate on
something in our past that has worked before. We ask, “What have I
been taught in my life, education, or work that will solve this problem?”
Then we analytically select the most promising approach based on past
experiences, excluding all other approaches, and work in a clearly
defined direction toward the solution of the problem. Because of the
apparent soundness of the steps based on past experiences, we become
arrogantly certain of the correctness of our conclusion.
In contrast, geniuses think productively, not reproductively. When
confronted with a problem, they ask themselves how many different
ways they can look the problem, how they can rethink it, and how many
different ways they can solve it, instead of asking how they have been
taught to solve it. They tend to come up with many different responses,
some of which are unconventional, and possibly, unique. In response to
the earlier question, a productive thinker would say that there are many
different ways to express “thirteen” and many different ways to halve
something. Following are some examples.
With productive thinking, one generates as many alternative
approaches as one can, considering the least as well as the most likely
approaches. It is the willingness to explore all approaches that is
important, even after one has found a promising one. Einstein was once
asked what the difference was between him and the average person. He
said that if you asked the average person to find a needle in a haystack,
the person would stop when he or she found a needle. He, on the other
hand, would tear through the entire haystack looking for all the possible
needles.
Most people see this pattern as a square composed of smaller squares
or circles, or as alternate rows of squares and circles. It isn’t easily seen
as columns of alternate squares and circles.
Once it’s pointed out that it can also be viewed as columns of alternate
squares and circles, we, of course, see it. We have become habituated to
passively organize similar items together in our minds. Geniuses, on the
other hand, subvert habituation by actively looking for alternative ways
to look at and think about things.
Richard Feynman proposed teaching productive thinking in our
educational institutions in lieu of reproductive thinking. He believed that
the successful user of mathematics is an inventor of new ways of
thinking in given situations. Even if the old ways are well known, he
thought it is usually better to invent your own way or a new way than it
is to look up an old solution and apply what you’ve looked up.
For example, 29 + 3 is considered a third-grade problem, because it
requires the advanced technique of carrying; yet Feynman pointed out
that a first grader could handle it by thinking 30, 31, 32. Or a child
could mark numbers on a line and count off the spaces—a method that
becomes useful in understanding measurements and fractions. One can
write larger numbers in columns and carry sums larger than 10, or use
fingers or algebra (2 times what plus 3 is 7?). He encouraged teaching
people how to think about problems many different ways, using trial and
error.
In contrast, reproductive thinking fosters rigidity of thought, which is
why we so often fail when confronted with a new problem that is
superficially similar to past experiences, but is different from previously
encountered problems in its deep structure. Interpreting such a problem
through the lens of past experience will, by definition, lead the thinker
astray. Reproductive thinking leads us to the usual ideas and not to
original ones. If you always think the way you’ve always thought, you’ll
always get what you’ve always got—the same old, same old ideas.
In 1968 the Swiss dominated the watch industry. The Swiss
themselves invented the electronic watch movement at their research
institute in Neuchtel, Switzerland. It was rejected, however, by every
Swiss watch manufacturer. Based on their experience in the industry,
they believed the electronic watch couldn’t possibly be the watch of the
future. After all, it was battery powered, did not have bearings or a
mainspring, and had almost no gears. Seiko took one look at this
invention that the Swiss manufacturers rejected at the World Watch
Congress that year and took over the world watch market. When Univac
invented the computer, they refused to talk to business people who
inquired about it, because they said the computer was invented for
scientists and had no business applications. Then along came IBM. IBM,
itself, once said that according to their past experiences in the computer
market, there was virtually no market for the personal computer. In fact,
they said they were absolutely certain there were no more than five or
six people in the entire world who needed a personal computer. Then
along came Apple.
We need to vary our ideas in order to succeed. In nature, a gene pool
that is totally lacking in variation would be totally unable to adapt to
changing circumstances. In time, the genetically encoded wisdom would
convert to foolishness, with consequences that would be fatal to the
species’ survival. A comparable process operates within us as
individuals. We all have a rich repertoire of ideas and concepts based on
past experiences that enable us to survive and prosper. But without any
provision for the variation of ideas, our usual ideas become stagnate and
lose their advantages, and in the end, we are defeated in our competition
