Last week, before volcano Eyjafjallajoekull erupted, when we still had a life… I went to listen to Roger Martin present his new book in London.
 The Design of Business looks into the lack of innovation in corporations. Roger, who is the Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, analysed patterns of thinking that prevent companies from being innovative.
Design thinking is the result of balancing new knowledge (innovation) with current knowledge (efficiency). It focuses on accelerating the process that enables knowledge to advance from mystery to heuristic (a rule of thumb that guides you towards a solution) to algorithm (a replicable formula).
According to Roger, the main challenge of design thinkers is turning the future into the past. “’Prove’ and ‘if’ are the most dangerous words to innovation.”
 I interviewed Roger for my book two years ago and what struck me already then is his ability to delve into human thinking and dissect it like a frog in a lab.
What really intrigues me are his efforts to understand how human knowledge progresses and how, by thinking harder about mysteries, we come to a different level of knowledge.
|
|
