Table Of ContentTHE UNBOUNDED MIND
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T E
UNB NDED
MIND
Breaking the Chains
of Traditional
Business Thinking
IAN I. MITROFF
AND
HAROLD A. LINSTONE
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York Oxford
Oxford University Press
Oxford New York
Athens Auckland Bangkok Bombay
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and associated companies in
Berlin Ibadan
Copyright © 1993 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
First published in 1993 by Oxford University Press, Inc.,
198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1995
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mittroff, Ian I.
The unbounded mind : breaking the chains
of traditional business thinking /
by Ian I. Mitrofifand Harold A. Linstone.
p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-507783-0
ISBN 0-19-510288-6 (Pbk.)
1. Business education—United States
2. Critical thinking—Study and teaching (Higher)—United States.
I. Linstone, Harold A.
II. Title. HF1131.M58 1993 650'.071'173—dcZO 92-15708
2468 10 975 31
Printed in the United States of America
For C. West Churchman
teacher, friend, and colleague
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Preface
The need for new thinking is like the weather. Everyone talks about it,
but beyond that, no one does much about it. This book not only talks
about the need for new thinking, but attempts to show precisely why and
how it can be accomplished,
It is precisely the inability of old ideas to meet the challenges of our
age that makes new thinking more critical than ever. If ours is indeed the
"new knowledge/information age," then ideas are obviously at its core.
The need for a philosophy of and for this age is more desperate than
ever.
Professional Education Today
The authors feel strongly that professional education in the United
States today is seriously deficient. Graduates emerge with a variety of
specialized tools of analysis that ill equip them for the complex real-
world problems they encounter in their professional lives. Our perspec-
tive is business school, the professional schools we know best, but we
also believe that the problem is common to other professional schools,
such as engineering and law.
While this is not primarily a book on education or curriculum reform,
it does contain a blueprint and a prescription for the kinds of thinking
skills and knowledge that students, workers, and executives at all levels
will need to master for life now and into the twenty-first century. If
America is to regain its economic standing, then it will have to turn out
students and executives at all levels who can identify outdated assump-
tions, and then critique, challenge, and replace them with new ones.
Philosophy in Action
Although, from one perspective, this is a book of and on philosophy, it is
philosophy with a new twist. We have attempted to make difficult ideas
viii PREFACE
accessible by using academic jargon as little as possible, and, conversely,
everyday examples as much as possible.
The book is an exercise in "applied philosophy" or "philosophy in
action." For many years, the authors have taught a number of courses in
"critical thinking," "creative problem solving," "brainstorming," "sys-
tems analysis, etc." to corporate executives, MBAs, and graduate stu-
dents. Few of them had a formal background in philosophy. It was
perhaps just as well they didn't, for it spared us from the awful task of
"unlearning" a number of misguided notions about philosophy. Philoso-
phy is neither primarily for, nor the exclusive province of professional,
academic philosophers. To exaggerate if only slightly, with a few signifi-
cant exceptions, professional philosophers have demonstrated a remark-
able inability and incredible disdain for getting involved with practical
problems. For this reason, we are especially critical of the role that
academic philosophers—if not academics in general—have played in
shedding light on vital issues.
It is one thing, however, to say that we are especially critical of the
traditional role that academic philosophers and academicians have played
in general. It is quite another to dismiss the fundamental role that
philosophy has in illuminating important problems.
In today's world, economic success demands that one be able to ex-
amine problems from multiple perspectives. It also demands that one
formulate multiple and conflicting definitions of critical problems. It
further demands that one be able to examine how a problem will affect
and be affected by different persons scattered throughout every level of
society, if not the entire world. It necessitates the ability to treat two of
the most critical aspects of all problems—their aesthetic and ethical
dimensions. Everyone must learn these skills and more if we are to
survive and prosper in the new world that is literally being created under
us. How to accomplish this is the subject of this book.
The knowledge and examination of key assumptions are the main
components of critical thinking. One of the best ways (but not the only)
to engage in critical thinking is to examine the philosophical ideas and
assumptions that form the base for the tools and techniques of profes-
sional education. In this sense, this is not a book on philosophy for the
sake of philosophy. It is fundamentally an assessment of the adequacy of
the foundations on which all professional education rests.
Los Angeles I.I.M.
Lake Oswego, Ore. H.A.L.
April 1992
Conte s
1. The World That Was and Is No More, 3
Part I Old T king
2. Agreement: The First Way of Knowing, 19
3. The World as a Formula: The Second Way of Knowing, 38
Part II Complex Thinking
4. Multiple Realities: The Third Way of Knowing, 53
5. Conflict: The Fourth Way of Knowing, 69
Part III New Thinking
6. Unbounded Systems Thinking: The Fifth Way of Knowing, 85
Part IV Applications and Methods of New Thinking
7. Bhopal: Catastrophe Making, 111
8. Paradigm Breaking: Surfacing and ging Key
Assumptions, 136
Part V The Future of Knowing
9. Conclusion: To See the World as an Interconnected Whole, 153
Appendix: Deeper Aspects of Unbounded Systems Thinking, 164
References, 172
Index, 173
Description:Global markets, Japanese competition, the service economy, the sophisticated consumer--American business today faces challenges undreamed of just a few decades ago, and traditional approaches to corporate problems are becoming increasingly less effective. And yet, as the authors of The Unbounded Min
