Red Thread Thinking: Weaving Together Connections for Brilliant Ideas and Profitable Innovation

“When people make choices in a market economy, they are deliberately choosing the solution that best meets their needs. Also, we don’t want to have to depend on donor grants and donations. That’s not sustainable.”

Recognition of this theory played a part in P&G’s decision to simplify its range of Head & Shoulders shampoos from 26 to 15, which resulted in a 10 percent increase in sales, according to Sheena Iyengar.

To harness strategic intuition, you have to leave the subject and the facts and stop thinking so hard about them. The literal presence of mind that comes when you clear your brain of all expectations is what usually precedes a flash of insight. That flash gives you the power to come up with and act on an idea.

The breaking down and storing of information is analysis, whereas searching and combining information is considered intuition.

you, as a solo practitioner, may have the home court advantage when it comes to the agility required to see new ideas through to fruition.

People are not yet talking about “culture strategy,” but they will, especially as popular culture has become the prevailing culture.

True insights are hard to come by because they are so masked by habits; it’s difficult to be objective with behaviors that seem routine on their face. Insight needs clarity. It needs to be specific.

The Web arose as an answer to an open challenge, through the swirling together of influences, ideas and realizations from many sides until by the wonders of the human mind, a new concept jelled. It was a process of accretion, not the linear solving of one problem after another.

it just proves that while you believe in that first aha and it gets you on the path, there is a point where you have to be sensitive to the need to not be married to it—even though you need to override criticism when appropriate.