Thinking without Limits: How can ordinary people have the innovative power to change their lives

In p>27, at Apple's MacWorld conference, CEO Steve Jobs showed the world the first iPhone smartphone. After the press conference, the whole world fell into the craze of iphone. I still remember a friend who said, "I feel embarrassed to go out without an iPhone".

In addition to lamenting the innovation and convenience of Apple's mobile phone, I am even more curious about how Jobs came up with endless innovative ideas.

I didn't know that a person's creativity is not innate until I recently read the book "Thinking without Limits" written by Franz Johansson, and ordinary people can also obtain excellent creativity by mastering the right methods.

In his book, Frans Johansson emphasized that when we combine different perspectives, cultures and backgrounds, we are likely to produce great ideas.

The author of this book is Frans Johnson, an American consultant, entrepreneur and writer. Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School, Bachelor of Science from Brown University, pioneer of cross-thinking concept. After the publication of this book, the author has toured many Fortune 5 companies including Nike, General Motors, IBM and JPMorgan Chase to promote the concept of this book.

After reading this book, I feel the following three things:

The concept of subdivision in modern society divides knowledge into different fields. At school, we learn the basic concepts of different disciplines. After work, we learn the experience of different industries. This learning mode leads us to think more about finding solutions in our familiar fields when we think about problems.

In the book Thinking without Limits, Frans Johansson said that if you only set foot in one field, you can basically only combine the concepts in this particular field to form an idea that extends in a specific direction. Frans called this idea "one-way thinking".

Most of us think in a one-way way, and we are used to thinking about problems in a certain field and looking for solutions.

For example, when company managers encounter problems, they are habitually looking for the successful solutions of previous people in the field of enterprise management. The methods we have found are well-known in this industry, which means that others can also use these methods. Therefore, in the fierce competition environment, one-way thinking mode can't help us to innovate.

so how can we form new ideas?

In his book Thinking without Limits, Frans Johansson said that when you walk into the intersection of different fields, you have the opportunity to connect the concepts of different fields and form new ideas that extend in many directions. He called this way of thinking "diversified thinking".

Franz gave an example in the book. Richard Dawkins in the field of evolutionary biology put forward the concept of "meme" in his book "Selfish Genes". Memes jump from one brain to another and spread themselves. Market experts have been greatly inspired and shocked by this concept. They used the concept of memetics to create an advertising industry, and helped other companies to grow and develop by designing well-known brand advertisements.

For example, the slogan of Coca-Cola can't stop the temptation, and the slogan of well-known sports brand Li Ning is all possible. When these brand slogans are implanted in our brains by various propaganda methods, we will remember them, form brand awareness and brand loyalty, and choose the brands we remember when buying and spending.

In other words, diversified thinking means combining new concepts and ideas borrowed from different knowledge fields with the experience in your own field, and then opening up new innovative fields.

when we step into the intersection of different fields, we can get rid of the shackles of past thinking and produce novel, breakthrough and creative ideas.

I don't know if you have such an experience. Different people will have different ideas about the same item or the same concept. For example, when a chef sees a cod in the ingredients, he will think of recipes related to cod and decide to use cod as the main course for dinner today. If it were a novelist, he might think of using cod as writing material in one of his chapters.

The reason why chefs and novelists have different ideas is that their way of thinking focuses on the field related to their own experience, that is, they associate with the past.

In his book Thinking Without Limits, Frans Johansson said that the chain of associations based on the past is very limited, which restricts our lateral thinking ability. Instead of subconsciously questioning the hypothesis, we quickly jumped to the conclusion, and then set up artificial obstacles for a specific situation. In other words, we deny our other ideas and set up barriers to the development of our creativity.

So how can we break our own inherent thinking barriers and establish a new way of thinking?

In the book Thinking Without Limits, Franz proposed three ways to help us break down the barriers of thinking.

master a lot of knowledge. By deeply experiencing different cultural backgrounds and absorbing the experience of various cultures, people can get rid of the viewpoint imposed by a single culture and look at any problem from multiple perspectives. For example, by studying the writing methods of domestic and foreign writers, we can learn from the thinking modes of different cultures, realize that there is more than one writing idea, and find innovative writing ideas.

adapt to different learning methods and cultivate the habit of lifelong learning. Extensive learning in new fields and the quality of autonomous learning are two important qualities that innovators have. Contact with knowledge in different fields can make our thinking not solidify in a certain field, keep an open mind and put forward innovative ideas. With the quality of self-study, you can study your familiar fields and disciplines deeply and observe them from different angles.

For example, during his college years, Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple Group, was not only interested in computers, but also liked painting, fonts and other aesthetic fields. Through self-study, he completed the research in the field of aesthetics, and then when designing an Apple mobile phone, Jobs applied his own research on aesthetics to the design, bringing aesthetic experience to users.

reverse the hypothesis. Using the reasoning method of reversing hypothesis will make our brain look at the problem from a completely different angle and clear the obstacles to diversified thinking. For example, we should consider how to improve customer satisfaction. Then we can use the method of reversing assumptions, how to make customers feel bad and how to make customers not want to cooperate with us.

Only by constantly contacting new knowledge fields and cultivating the habit of lifelong learning can we break the inherent barriers of thinking and establish new ways of thinking. Using the method of reversing hypothesis and thinking from different angles can help us put forward innovative ideas.

each of us has an infinite imagination. Our brains are thinking about problems and generating ideas all the time except when we are sleeping.

But usually, when we think some ideas are of little use, we don't record them, but just wait for "really good ideas" to pop up. Just like a friend of mine told me not long ago that the idea of a new project being carried out by his company came to him a long time ago, but at that time he thought it was useless and gave up. Now it has been put forward by others, and it will soon become a reality, and he feels regretful.

In the book Thinking without Limits, Frans Johansson suggested that in order to maximize the energy at the intersection, we must first collect as many ideas as possible, and then evaluate and select them.

whenever an idea comes into our brain, most people's first reaction is to evaluate whether the idea works or not. This practice greatly limits our creativity and limits our way of thinking to a narrow range.

In his book, Frans proposes to set quantitative goals for brainstorming, which can help us collect as many ideas as possible. To put it simply, every time you brainstorm, first set yourself the number of good ideas that must be put forward, and then consider whether your attention is feasible.

for example, we want to solve how to increase sales. Then stipulate that you must come up with 1 ways to increase sales when brainstorming. Then don't evaluate the feasibility of the idea, keep thinking posture and keep writing your own ideas. After writing 1 articles, we will evaluate the feasibility.

setting quantitative goals is to force us to come up with more ideas than plain ideas in our minds. By setting the requirements of quantity, we will find that the first ideas we flash are the most common and uncreative.

In order to achieve quantitative goals, we will constantly spread our thoughts. When we can't come up with ideas in our own field, our brains will automatically connect with other fields and look for as many ideas as possible in different fields to achieve our goals. And the process of finding ideas is also the process of finding the intersection of different fields.

through active thinking, we can combine knowledge in different fields with our own experience to produce more creative ideas. By recording the results of thinking, we can find the gaps between different fields, create a new field, and become leaders in a brand-new field.

The book Thinking Without Limits tells us that innovative thinking is not innate by analyzing the successful path of innovators in new fields. As long as we find the intersection of different fields, we can generate creative ideas, create a brand-new field and become a minority who control our destiny.

Puxi, president of Harvard University in the United States, once profoundly pointed out that whether a person has innovative ability is the watershed between first-class talents and third-rate talents.

the innovative ability of most of us has been obliterated by the limitation of thinking. Only by keeping an open mind, contacting with different subject knowledge and improving our cognition can we break the inherent thinking limitations and have innovative thinking. Only by constantly putting forward creative ideas can we move towards an outstanding life.

If you are still regretting your mediocrity, you might as well open this book "Thinking without Limits" and let Frans, the master of cross-thinking, tell you how to move from mediocrity to Excellence.