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Think Wrong: How to Conquer the Status Quo and Do Work That Matters
The way we solve problems is broken. We are trapped by techniques and assumptions of a prior era.Today challenges emerge at an ever-accelerating rate, and we struggle to find the imaginative answers we crave. When we do, biology and culture conspire to obstruct our progress.
Think How to Conquer the Status Quo and Do Work That Matters teaches you how to use Future's radical problem-solving system to reliably produce surprising, ingenious, and seemingly magical answers to your most wicked questions. This book provides you with new language, frameworks, and tools to conquer the status quo and drive change.
Inside Think Wrong, designers and innovators John Bielenberg, Mike Burn, and Greg Galle show how pioneering teams of people have cultivated ways to challenge both their brains and the culture at large. These people learned to think wrong, and so can you.
An introduction offers the fundamental groundwork of Think Wrong. The subsequent chapters present six practices developed by the Be Bold, Get Out, Let Go, Make Stuff, Bet Small, and Move Fast. Using firsthand case studies of success, and offering Think Wrong Drills that you may use, Think Wrong is a field guide for applying this highly effective problem-solving system to challenges big and small. In addition to the drills provided in the book, Think Wrong readers are provided access to free online resources.
Think How to Conquer the Status Quo and Do Work That Matters teaches you how to use Future's radical problem-solving system to reliably produce surprising, ingenious, and seemingly magical answers to your most wicked questions. This book provides you with new language, frameworks, and tools to conquer the status quo and drive change.
Inside Think Wrong, designers and innovators John Bielenberg, Mike Burn, and Greg Galle show how pioneering teams of people have cultivated ways to challenge both their brains and the culture at large. These people learned to think wrong, and so can you.
An introduction offers the fundamental groundwork of Think Wrong. The subsequent chapters present six practices developed by the Be Bold, Get Out, Let Go, Make Stuff, Bet Small, and Move Fast. Using firsthand case studies of success, and offering Think Wrong Drills that you may use, Think Wrong is a field guide for applying this highly effective problem-solving system to challenges big and small. In addition to the drills provided in the book, Think Wrong readers are provided access to free online resources.
Kindle Edition
Published October 13, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
December 25, 2017
"The way we solve problems is broken" - say this book right away. I was intrigued by the boldness, and impressed with the design of the book, but I did not find the content to be particularly ground-breaking. Besides the introduction, the content is structured into 6 "practices", such as "Be Bold", "Make Stuff" or "Bet Small". For each practice there are motivating examples, mostly from social field, and a few drills - processes you can use to arrive at non-conventional solution, typically in a group-thinking fashion. Sadly, I have issues with all of design, examples, and drills.
One huge presentation issue is that most 'drills' refer to 'posters', which are only available online. It's rather disappointing to read a book on a plane, and find that an essential part of the proposed solution is only online. Even with sufficient connectivity, having to grab laptop, login to a website, and check PDF there is fairly awkward. The bold design of the book also interferes with content density. There are just 251 pages in a large font, lots of photos, and lots of full-page section headers, not much left for body text.
The examples are mostly from social fields. Of course, there are lots of social issues worth solving, but the described successes don't seem huge. For example, book describes a cafe opened in a depressed town that because hugely popular, and even attract tourist from other town. That's a success, but there are thousands of cafes that fail every month, and it's not clear that any practice of this book is more important than the chance.
The practices and drills also did not appear noteworthy to me. Surely, drawing lines on a whiteboard and moving stickers is fun, but is that better than just old-fashioned brainstorming? Practices such as "Make Stuff" or "Bet Small" seems like well-known ideas of "Lean Startup". Finally, the number of drills and details in the book is just not very large, maybe because there's just not enough text content. For comparison, old classic "How to Solve it" has dozens of heuristics. One can say those are heuristics for "old way of solving things", but it's an example of comprehensive list of heuristics and approaches. More recently, "Myths of Innovation" lists dozens of historic examples of how innovation works or doesn't.
To sum up, this book can possibly be inspiring for a person in a social field, I found it less detailed, well-researched or novel than I would have liked.
Disclaimer: I was provided with a free copy by the publisher so that I could write a review.
One huge presentation issue is that most 'drills' refer to 'posters', which are only available online. It's rather disappointing to read a book on a plane, and find that an essential part of the proposed solution is only online. Even with sufficient connectivity, having to grab laptop, login to a website, and check PDF there is fairly awkward. The bold design of the book also interferes with content density. There are just 251 pages in a large font, lots of photos, and lots of full-page section headers, not much left for body text.
The examples are mostly from social fields. Of course, there are lots of social issues worth solving, but the described successes don't seem huge. For example, book describes a cafe opened in a depressed town that because hugely popular, and even attract tourist from other town. That's a success, but there are thousands of cafes that fail every month, and it's not clear that any practice of this book is more important than the chance.
The practices and drills also did not appear noteworthy to me. Surely, drawing lines on a whiteboard and moving stickers is fun, but is that better than just old-fashioned brainstorming? Practices such as "Make Stuff" or "Bet Small" seems like well-known ideas of "Lean Startup". Finally, the number of drills and details in the book is just not very large, maybe because there's just not enough text content. For comparison, old classic "How to Solve it" has dozens of heuristics. One can say those are heuristics for "old way of solving things", but it's an example of comprehensive list of heuristics and approaches. More recently, "Myths of Innovation" lists dozens of historic examples of how innovation works or doesn't.
To sum up, this book can possibly be inspiring for a person in a social field, I found it less detailed, well-researched or novel than I would have liked.
Disclaimer: I was provided with a free copy by the publisher so that I could write a review.
November 14, 2016
If you want to have a unique way of looking for solutions to problems, then Think Wrong is the book for you!
Think Wrong is a really interesting book that I purchased to try to help my daughter think outside the box. She is an incredibly smart young lady, but often feels very uncomfortable thinking out of the norm when trying to solve a problem. She, like many people, feels the need to follow the status quo, yet at the same time, feels like she needs to come up with a completely different solution. This book helps the reader understand why people think the way they do, how to break free and look at problems from a different perspective, and how to brainstorm to solve the problem. It explains how to incorporate others with a completely different background in the quest and how to learn from them.
This was a really good book with a lot of good information on how to tackle situations that don’t seem to have a solution.
Think Wrong is a really interesting book that I purchased to try to help my daughter think outside the box. She is an incredibly smart young lady, but often feels very uncomfortable thinking out of the norm when trying to solve a problem. She, like many people, feels the need to follow the status quo, yet at the same time, feels like she needs to come up with a completely different solution. This book helps the reader understand why people think the way they do, how to break free and look at problems from a different perspective, and how to brainstorm to solve the problem. It explains how to incorporate others with a completely different background in the quest and how to learn from them.
This was a really good book with a lot of good information on how to tackle situations that don’t seem to have a solution.
October 3, 2021
Any book that opens and closes with onomatopoeia must be fun! "Think Wrong" delivers on being a fun read and great overview, toolbox for battling status-quo bias, among others, and allowing innovation to survive.
Thinking "Right", or as Kahneman calls it "Fast", is efficient and a powerful evolutionary tool giving us advantage in many situations. Unfortunately, creativity and innovation is not typically apart of those situations and we need to find ways to unlock our mind from biases and what we already believe to be true and known. John Bielenberg's book "Think Wrong" offers background, examples, and tools to help you and your organization to suspend right thinking and allow wrong thinking to discover whole new ways to view, define, and innovate the future.
A good read and well laid out to become a reference book, add it to your shelf if you are looking for different ways to think!
Thinking "Right", or as Kahneman calls it "Fast", is efficient and a powerful evolutionary tool giving us advantage in many situations. Unfortunately, creativity and innovation is not typically apart of those situations and we need to find ways to unlock our mind from biases and what we already believe to be true and known. John Bielenberg's book "Think Wrong" offers background, examples, and tools to help you and your organization to suspend right thinking and allow wrong thinking to discover whole new ways to view, define, and innovate the future.
A good read and well laid out to become a reference book, add it to your shelf if you are looking for different ways to think!
December 22, 2020
The thinking and workshops that the authors lead deliver on their goal to make participants think wrong. I’ve seen it and been a part of it. To bottle up that magic in a book is no easy feat and the authors generally hit the Mark. From an accessibility standpoint, I wish more illustration of the drills could have been provided, instead of relying on a website.
As we move into more remote working environments, I hope the authors release a new version of this for distributed teams and where the future of work is heading. I bet the authors are already 3 steps ... askew.
As we move into more remote working environments, I hope the authors release a new version of this for distributed teams and where the future of work is heading. I bet the authors are already 3 steps ... askew.
October 28, 2017
We read this book as a Davis School District Professional Learning Team. The common vocabulary of the "predictable path" and the "both path" have helped us (try to) think outside of the box. It is fascinating to me how tricky and challenging these principles are to actually practice. I am a "get it done" kind of person so this book is great food for thought.
"The seemingly crazy notions are the ones that change everything."
"The seemingly crazy notions are the ones that change everything."
March 28, 2024
Great graphic design, good concept. Still processing, but even just 8 years later it feels like a section on exploring the depths that is the ethics of disruption is conspicuously absent, but that might just be a desperate need for post-Musk clarity.
It also seems a bit odd to devote almost a quarter of a book to exercises you can't fully comprehend without also purchasing posters of some kind but maybe I'm just thinking wrong.
It also seems a bit odd to devote almost a quarter of a book to exercises you can't fully comprehend without also purchasing posters of some kind but maybe I'm just thinking wrong.
July 13, 2017
This is a good book. What I found most useful were the techniques the authors used in their own workshops (blitzes) with big and small organizations. As a design educator, I feel these resources (and those they put online) will be quite useful in my own college classroom going forward. I look forward to thinking wrong a lot more everyday.
February 20, 2017
A well written approach to thinking out of the box. Be bold. Get out. Let go. Make stuff. Bet small. Move fast. Underlined with practical samples, the book inspires to explore a new way of working - and living.
November 26, 2018
Great book for a troublemaker!!!
A Great way for getting into new worlds. These guys take you from the usual and straigth way of doing things to an entirely new method for disrupting any problem. For me is a must read if you really want to shake things Out.
A Great way for getting into new worlds. These guys take you from the usual and straigth way of doing things to an entirely new method for disrupting any problem. For me is a must read if you really want to shake things Out.
January 7, 2019
Just what I needed
As some who works in finance - a place where status quo is revered - I found this book to have practical and helpful tips of how to shake great ideas loose. Will be recommending to everyone.
As some who works in finance - a place where status quo is revered - I found this book to have practical and helpful tips of how to shake great ideas loose. Will be recommending to everyone.
November 10, 2017
Utterly Delightful
This book reinforced how counterintuitive life is. A reminder to all that bucking convention is the side door to innovation.
This book reinforced how counterintuitive life is. A reminder to all that bucking convention is the side door to innovation.
August 24, 2019
Inspiring
Good for old slow traditional companies to learn
Good for old slow traditional companies to learn
August 21, 2020
A very good tactical guide to creative thinking with many case studies and success stories!
December 28, 2023
Super fascinating and interesting book. I’ve been getting more into innovation and trying to be different and this was a killer read.
July 6, 2024
Full of brilliant prompts and exercises to unlock, unstick, develop, devise, inspire, and build teams. Highly recommend.
December 21, 2024
An interesting way to look at life
March 25, 2017
The book is about simple and effective ideas to steer focus to solve problems at hand by using any/every means/ways/solutions as opposed to only leaning on tried-n-true means/ways/solutions. It provides six "mantras" -- be bold, get out, let go, make stuff, bet small, and move fast -- along with drills to get the stakeholders into this mindset.
The content can be used by both individuals and teams; however, the accompanying examples are focused on teams and organizations.
A book with simple ideas to focus on solving problems.
The content can be used by both individuals and teams; however, the accompanying examples are focused on teams and organizations.
A book with simple ideas to focus on solving problems.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews