How we think

Has thinking been given the back row seat on the issue of creative thinking?

Creativity has to do with originality; imagining something new. So why is it then that the way companies choose to structure their strategic and creative process stays the same for months or even years?

(Meaning that some senior strategist team develops a strategy for thinking, implements it as “this is how its done around here”, and then leaves it.)

We build models for approaching problems that becomes as fossil as the company DNA. We visualize it into thumbprints that gets glued to Power Point slides and present them to clients as the way thinking is structured and programmed in the company

.

The great opportunity with problem solving is that it’s one hell of a process to start every project with thinking about thinking. Blank slate: What kind of problem is this, and how do we approach it? But in an industry where ideas are so similar that two identical concepts emerging at the same time on opposite sides of the world is not a rare occurrence, we are remarkably apt at thinking that originality emerges within the framework of what we think – not how we think.

The best thing about McLuhan is not his original ideas, but his ability to refuse anything as truth
. And by that questioning it, studying it and in the end understanding it – empowering us to change it.

We are accepting way too much as truth or norm when it comes to strategy and thinking. And I get the notion that we are so stuck on designing products of “storytelling” and “emotion” that we are forgetting the deliverable: The idea – and the magnitude of forms it can take.

My point is that how we think should be as original and imaginative as the projects we are set to solve. That how we think also is a creative process.