Self-discovery

 

Be Different!

Challenging Assumptions

Questioning the Everyday Things You Take for Granted

 

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Vadim Kotelnikov

By: Vadim Kotelnikov

Inventor and Founder

Fun4Biz

Ten3 Business e-Coach

1000ventures.com

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"Assumption is the mother of all screw-ups." – Wethern’s Law of Suspended Judgement... More Murphy Laws

 

The Jazz of Innovation

11 Practice Tips

Tips for Challenging Assumptions

By: Paul Sloan2

  • Understand the Problem: recognize that you and everyone else have ingrained assumptions about every situation

  • Play a Child: Ask plenty of basic 'Why?' and 'Why Not?' questions in order to discover and challenge those assumptions

  • Play an External Observer: pretend you are a complete outsider and ask questions like 'Why do you do it this way at all?'

  • Unpackage the Problem: reduce a situation to its simplest components in order to take it out of your environment

  • Reframe: consider an issue from many different angles; restate a problem in different terms

  • Imagine the Opposite: consider what the experts and professionals advise and then consider doing the opposite

Creative Thinking Tips

  • Break out of self-imposed limitations... More

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Be Different and Make a Difference

4 Questions To Ask Yourself

Asking Searching Questions

"Why? What If?" Questions

 

The Starting Point of Innovation and Growth

Assumptions play a vital part in creative thinking.

Challenging assumptions means questioning the everyday things you take for granted. "The best assumption to have is that any commonly held belief is wrong," says Ken Olson, CEO of DEC.

 Case in Point  Albert Einstein's Method

Albert Einstein is famous for making assumptions and thinking out their implications. Having assumed that he was riding on the back of a sunbeam, travelling through the universe with the speed of light, Einstein tried to imagine how things would look to him. The eventual result  was the General Theory of Relativity.

Managing Assumptions

Many both conscious and unconscious assumptions restrict creative thinking. Managing assumptions is very important for your success.

"It includes being able both to sense and challenge the unconscious constraints or rules that you or others impose on problems, situations, decisions, people, teams and organizations... To be able to manage assumptions also encompasses deploying them actively like scouts or pioneers of the main body of your mind. Here they act like tentative hypotheses. The more imaginative or far-fetched they are the more likely they will carry a payload of new possibilities or new ideas," says John Adair, the author of Effective Innovation: How to Stay Ahead of the Competition.

Ask Searching Questions

Creativity requires an inquisitive mind. Unless you ask lots of "Why?" and "What If"? questions, you won't generate creative insights. "To avoid this most common of creative errors, be sure to peek under all carpets, including your own... More

Entrepreneurial Creativity (Ten3 Mini-course)

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  Entrepreneurial Creativity

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Fun4Biz: Creativity Contests

Finding Opportunities in a Problem

Creative Problem Solving (CPS)

Why? What If?

 

 

References:

  1. Effective Innovation: How to Stay Ahead of the Competition, John Adair

  2. Improve Your Lateral Thinking: Puzzles To Challenge Your Mind, Paul Sloane

  3. Creativity, Alexander Hiam

 
 

 

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