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    2012-11-02 Thinking Like A Genius

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    The document discusses eight strategies that creative geniuses throughout history have used to think productively and solve problems, such as looking at problems from many perspectives, visualizing solutions, making novel combinations, forming relationships between dissimilar subjects, thinking in opposites, thinking metaphorically, and preparing for chance.

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    2012-11-02 Thinking Like A Genius

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    The document discusses eight strategies that creative geniuses throughout history have used to think productively and solve problems, such as looking at problems from many perspectives, visualizing solutions, making novel combinations, forming relationships between dissimilar subjects, thinking in opposites, thinking metaphorically, and preparing for chance.

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    2012-11-02 Thinking Like a Genius

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    The document discusses eight strategies that creative geniuses throughout history have used to think productively and solve problems, such as looking at problems from many perspectives, visualizing solutions, making novel combinations, forming relationships between dissimilar subjects, thinking in opposites, thinking metaphorically, and preparing for chance.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    10 views2 pages

    2012-11-02 Thinking Like A Genius

    Uploaded by

    altemsahvetmed.85
    The document discusses eight strategies that creative geniuses throughout history have used to think productively and solve problems, such as looking at problems from many perspectives, visualizing solutions, making novel combinations, forming relationships between dissimilar subjects, thinking in opposites, thinking metaphorically, and preparing for chance.

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    Article: Thinking Like a Genius

    “Even if you’re not a genius, you can use the same strategies as Aristotle and Einstein to harness
    the power of your creative mind and better manage your future.”

    The following eight strategies encourage you to think productively, rather than reproductively, in
    order to arrive at solutions to problems. “These strategies are common to the thinking styles of
    creative geniuses in science, art, and industry throughout history.”

    1. Look at problems in many different ways, and find new perspectives that no one else has taken
    (or no one else has publicized!)

    Leonardo da Vinci believed that, to gain knowledge about the form of a problem, you begin by
    learning how to restructure it in many different ways. He felt that the first way he looked at a
    problem was too biased. Often, the problem itself is reconstructed and becomes a new one.

    2. Visualize!

    When Einstein thought through a problem, he always found it necessary to formulate his subject
    in as many different ways as possible, including using diagrams. He visualized solutions, and
    believed that words and numbers as such did not play a significant role in his thinking process.

    3. Produce! A distinguishing characteristic of genius is productivity.

    Thomas Edison held 1,093 patents. He guaranteed productivity by giving himself and his
    assistants idea quotas. In a study of 2,036 scientists throughout history, Dean Keith Simonton of
    the University of California at Davis found that the most respected scientists produced not only
    great works, but also many “bad” ones. They weren’t afraid to fail, or to produce mediocre in
    order to arrive at excellence.

    4. Make novel combinations. Combine, and recombine, ideas, images, and thoughts into different
    combinations no matter how incongruent or unusual.

    The laws of heredity on which the modern science of genetics is based came from the Austrian
    monk Grego Mendel, who combined mathematics and biology to create a new science.

    5. Form relationships; make connections between dissimilar subjects.

    Da Vinci forced a relationship between the sound of a bell and a stone hitting water. This enabled
    him to make the connection that sound travels in waves. Samuel Morse invented relay stations
    for telegraphic signals when observing relay stations for horses.

    6. Think in opposites.

    Physicist Niels Bohr believed, that if you held opposites together, then you suspend your
    thought, and your mind moves to a new level. His ability to imagine light as both a particle and a
    wave led to his conception of the principle of complementarity. Suspending thought (logic) may
    allow your mind to create a new form.

    7. Think metaphorically.

    Aristotle considered metaphor a sign of genius, and believed that the individual who had the
    capacity to perceive resemblances between two separate areas of existence and link them
    together was a person of special gifts.

    8. Prepare yourself for chance.

    Whenever we attempt to do something and fail, we end up doing something else. That is the first
    principle of creative accident. Failure can be productive only if we do not focus on it as an
    unproductive result. Instead: analyze the process, its components, and how you can change them,
    to arrive at other results. Do not ask the question “Why have I failed?”, but rather “What have I
    done?”

    Adapted with permission from: Michalko, Michael, Thinking Like a Genius: Eight strategies
    used by the super creative, from Aristotle and Leonardo to Einstein and Edison (New Horizons
    for Learning) as seen at http://www.newhoriz ons.org/wwart_ michalko1. html, (June 15, 1999)
    This article first appeared in THE FUTURIST, May 1998

    Michael Michalko is the author of Thinkertoys (A Handbook of Business Creativity), ThinkPak


    (A Brainstorming Card Set), and Cracking Creativity: The Secrets of Creative Geniuses (Ten
    Speed Press, 1998).

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