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ReTHINK SYMPOSIUM :

Iconoclasts: Creating Great Minds that think different

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“To see things differently than other people, the most effective solution is to bombard the brain
with things it has never encountered before. Novelty releases the perceptual process from the
shackles of past experience and forces the brain to make new judgments.

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Fear is the biggest hurdle to become iconoclast.

Fear relates primarily to survival. So any situation that threatens survival activates the fear
system and puts the body in motion to do something and that something tends to be – retreat.

The fear system has evolved over millions of years to essentially protect animals from
predators in situations in which they would be eaten or killed. When an animal’s fear system is
activated, and that includes humans, it provokes a retreat. It is very rare, if not impossible, when the
fear system is active, to promote the opposite of retreat, which would be exploration. These are
fundamental principles of evolution.

Why do we have a fear system in the first place? What are the predominant fears that
animals have? It comes down to survival. If you think about it, the few things an animal has to do are
to survive and reproduce. Fear relates primarily to survival. So any situation that threatens survival
activates the fear system and puts the body in motion to do something and that something tends to be
– retreat.

That makes a lot of sense for animals, and it probably made sense for our ancestors
100,000 years ago, but in situations today, there are not very many circumstances where our very
survival is threatened in such an imminent way. Nevertheless, we have brains that still respond the
same way to activate that fear system, which is still very sensitive and tends to provoke the same
reaction.

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intelligence does not equal better thinking

Here's a fundamental question that we rarely try to answer: 'Are intelligent people
capable of better thinking?‘

The assumed answer is 'yes', because that is part of our definition of intelligence. An
intelligent person is someone who seems more capable of thinking than other people. Yet with
Edward De Bono (founder for lateral thinking technique)experience across a very wide range of
people, the obvious answer is not true.

Certainly intelligence, understanding and analysis do seem to go together. Yet
somebody may be very good at analysis but poor at design thinking or operational thinking –
the type of thinking involved in making things happen.

With 'design' you put things together to deliver a desired value. Excellence at
analysis does not mean excellence in design. Some countries teach philosophy as part of the
school curriculum. The intention is very good because the plan is to teach thinking. But
philosophy teaches analysis; it does not teach design thinking.

Then there is information. Intelligent people understand and absorb information
more readily. So they tend to have more information to play with. Often the right information
acts as a substitute for thinking.

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Kroc’s innovation came in the marketing realm. In the late 1960s, he started
marketing children by creating the character of Ronald McDonald. That was a stroke of genius in
terms of a social understanding of the customer. Until that point, no one had marketed to
children because the conventional wisdom was, ‘Why bother? They don’t have any money’. In
essence, Kroc’s response was, ‘That may be true, but their parents do’. He created a connection
to that particular audience through a clown, and he correctly predicted that by getting the kids
to want to go to a restaurant, they would convince their parents to take them there. His insight
involved social intelligence and how to connect to people in a completely novel way.

Like other investors who bill themselves as ‘contrarians’, David Dreman (founder and CEO of
Dreman Value Management) has built his portfolio – and indeed his reputation – on the idea of
going against popular opinion on Wall Street. This is an extremely difficult thing to do, because
people on Wall Street are subject to strong social forces, and tend toward conformity and
chasing fads. Look at the mess the markets are in right now: it’s the result of herd behaviour, and
of the belief that certain investments are good because everyone else is pursuing them.
Dreman’s example is significant because he has been able to fight the urge to do what every
other investor is doing, and instead, to invest in things that are out of favour. This is one of
Warren Buffett’s strengths as well.

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By definition, if you’re doing something differently, you’re doing something outside of
"The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation,
what everyone else does, and that is a situation we are all made to fear and avoid.

but your thoughts about iconoclasts overcome involves social skills, and again, these
The third barrier that
it."
come into play because our brains are built for social environments. If you conquer the first two
impediments– perception and fear – and actually arrive at an idea that is truly novel, you are then
Eckhart Tolle
faced with the task of finding ways to convince other people of its merits. Persuading others
requires a fair deal of social intelligence, since most people will react with aversion to anything that
is different.

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Where do new ideas actually come from?

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The human brain comes to like that with which it is familiar. And it is this sort of
familiarity that the successful iconoclast must strive for. Rightly or wrongly, people put their money
into things that they are familiar with.

The brain is lazy. It changes only when it has to. And the conditions that consistently
force the brain to rewire itself are when it confronts something novel. Novelty equals learning,
and learning means physical rewiring of the brain.

How can you think differently, better and deeper, and create a better future for
yourself, your business, and the world? Ideas are the new currency of success The world is
changing at a phenomenal pace. Seismic shifts are transforming your markets -often invisible, but
with immense implications.

New technologies, economics, fashion and culture have transformed people’s
expectations and dreams. Survival and success requires you to explore places no business has gone
before, to be more curious and creative -to see things differently, and think different things.

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When Gutenberg was asked how he arrived at
the invention of the printing press, he
confessed it was as simple as seeing a new
connection between two existing products:
the wine press and the coin punch.

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Imagine weird combinations

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Your combination

" Live out of your imagination,
not your history."

Stephen Covey

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Imagine weird combinations

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The need for new way of thinking

To this day, Western culture depends on this type of thinking. In family arguments,
in business discussions, in the law courts, and in governing assemblies, we use the thinking
system of the Greeks, based on argument and critical thinking.

THE GANG OF THREE

Socrates (469-399 B.C.)
Socrates was trained as a "sophist." Sophists were people who played with words and showed
how careful choice of words could lead you to almost any conclusion you wanted. Socrates was
interested in challenging people's thinking and, indeed, getting them to think at all instead of
just taking things for granted. He wanted people to examine what they meant when they said
something. He was not concerned with building things up or making things happen.

From Socrates we get the great emphasis on argument and critical thinking. Socrates chose to
make argument the main thinking tool. Within argument, there was to be critical thinking: Why
do you say that? What do you mean by that?

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Plato (c. 427-348 B.C.)

Plato is generally held to be the father of Western philosophy. He is best-known for
his famous analogy of the cave. Suppose someone is bound up so that the person cannot turn
around but can only look at the back wall of the cave. There is a fire at the mouth of the
cave. If someone comes into the cave, then the bound person cannot see the newcomer directly
but can only see the shadow cast by the fire on the back wall of the cave. So as we go through
life, we cannot see truth and reality but only "shadows" of these. If we try hard enough and
listen to philosophers, then perhaps we can get a glimpse of the truth. From Plato we get the
notion that there is the "truth" somewhere but that we have to search for it to find it. The way to
search for the truth is to use critical thinking to attack what is untrue.

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Whenever you want to reject an idea. Think twice and remember below statements

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Edison had a simple way of conducting interviews. He'd invite prospective employees to join
him for soup in the company cafeteria. If they salted their soup before tasting it, the interview was over.

But why?

Edison could not afford to surround himself with people ruled by faulty assumptions.

Of all the roadblocks of being and iconoclast and for innovation, assumptions are the worst. THEY STOP
US BEFORE WE EVEN START

Einstein was asked what the difference between him and
average person. He said :

“ If you asked the average person to find a
needle in haystack, the person would stop
when he or she found the needle. Me, on the
other hand, would tear through the entire
haystack for all possible needles”
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Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

Aristotle was the pupil of Plato and the tutor of Alexander the Great. Aristotle was a
very practical person. He developed the notion of "categories," which are really definitions. So
you might have a definition of a "chair" or a "table." When you come across a piece of
furniture, you have to judge whether that piece of furniture fits the definition of a chair. If
it does fit, you say it is a chair. The object cannot both be a chair and not be a chair at the
same time. That would be a "contradiction." On the basis of his categories and the
avoidance of contradiction, Aristotle developed the sort of logic we still use today (based
largely on "is" and "is not"). From Aristotle we get a type of logic based on identity and
non-identity, on inclusion and exclusion.

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THE OUTCOME OF THE GANG OF THREE

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The need to be right all the time is the biggest bar to new ideas. It is
better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong than to be
always right by having no ideas at all. "
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