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| Think Better: An Innovator's Guide to Productive Thinking | 
 enlarge | Author: Tim Hurson
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (38 reviews)
Sales Rank: 32183
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 300
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.2
ISBN: 0071494936
Dewey Decimal Number: 153.42
EAN: 9780071494939
ASIN: 0071494936
Publication Date: September 26, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
There are thousands of books about thinking. But there are very few books that provide clear how-to information that can actually help you think better.. . Think Better is about Productive Thinking ? why it?s important, how it works, and how to use it at work, at home, and at play. Productive Thinking is a game changer ? a practical, easy-to-learn, repeatable process that helps people understand more clearly, think more creatively, and plan more effectively. It's based on the thinking strategies that people we celebrate for their creativity have been using for centuries. Tim Hurson brings Productive Thinking out of the closet and presents it in a way that makes it easy for anyone to grasp and use ? so you can think better, work better, and do better in every aspect of your life.. Think Better demonstrates how you can start with an intractable technical problem, an unmet consumer need, or a gaping chasm in your business strategy and, by following a clearly defined, practical thinking process, arrive at a robust, innovative solution.. Many companies use the Productive Thinking model to generate fresh solutions for tough business problems, and many individuals rely on it to solve pressing personal problems.. . The principles you'll find in Think Better are straight-forward: separate your thinking into creative thinking and critical thinking; stay with the question; strive for the ?third third? by generating lots and lots of ideas; and look for unexpected connections. . . The model consists of six interlocking steps: . . Step 1:What's Going On? Explore and truly understand the challenge. . Step 2: What's Success? Envision the ideal outcome and establish success criteria. . Step 3: What's the Question? Pinpoint the real problem or opportunity. . Step 4: Generate Answers List many possible solutions. . Step 5: Forge the Solution Decide which solution is best. Then make it better. . Step 6: Align Resources Create an action plan. . . Tim Hurson starts by explaining how we all build inner barriers to effective thinking. He identifies our habits of thinking that severely limit our behavior, from ?monkey mind? to ?gator brain.? Then he demonstrates how to overcome these barriers. . . More than anything, productive thinking is an attitude that will let you look at problems and convert them into opportunities. At the end of this disciplined brainstorming process, you'll have a concrete action plan, complete with timelines and deadlines. . . The book is filled with many of Hurson's original brainstorming tools that will empower you to generate, organize, and process ideas. For example, you can identify your best ideas using the five C's: Cull, Cluster, Combine, Clarify and Choose. And you can transform an embryonic idea into a robust solution with POWER, which stands for Positives, Objections, What else?, Enhancements and Remedies. . . To create the future, you first must be able to imagine it. Productive thinking is a way to help you do that. . .
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| Customer Reviews: Read 33 more reviews...
Think better! October 18, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Nutshell review - This book presents a framework for learning how to think better and improve the problem solving process. There are many such "better thinking" frameworks and this one has been developed by the author as a practicing consultant in this field. The author makes an excellent case for why the framework will improve the thinking process, explains it clearly and concisely, and the book is an easy to follow step-by-step guide to implementing the framework.
 A methodical approach to creativity October 5, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is basically a 'self help' sort of book. According to the author, if you buy this tome, read it, and apply the contents, something great will happen.
So I bought it. And I read it. And I applied the contents.
What this book is about is thinking more creatively, not thinking more deeply, as it were.
The core premise of the book is that typical thinking relies heavily on what we've done previously. Learning by experience is what humans do. Hurson calls this 'reproductive thinking' as it reproduces the past. This is frequently a good way to do things. But no amount of reproductive thinking will turn an adding machine into a spreadsheet. To make this leap, you need "productive thinking."
The crux of the book is how to think this way. Suppose you have some problem. You assemble your team of people (works individually too, but that isn't his focus) and write down every solution the team can think of to that problem. Analysis is not allowed - just raw ideas. Within a few minutes, people have called out the obvious solutions. The leader of the group keeps writing them down and asking for more using a number of techniques in the book. Before long, people will start giving dubious solutions. This is good. Finally, at some point, the answers become bizarre. This section is what Hurson calls the "third third" of the list. He posits that the good stuff - the truly innovative solutions - are at the bottom of the list. Most of the time, they are worthless. But if you allow these fledgling ideas to live for a while, sometimes they attain flight status.
While we had our power outage, I had 9 days to try this. I am designing some software. I started making a list of the solutions to my problems (this software has many facets which constitute many problems.) I wrote down ideas, concerns, drawings - anything. What I found was that once I ran out of ideas, I'd make some connection, and I'd get 25 more ideas. Then I'd be empty. But the next day it would happen again. It was difficult, but I finally - finally - made it to 100 ideas and thoughts, an arbitrary goal designed to make me stretch. Then I saw another connection and wrote down 30 more ideas! I stopped because the ideas, if valid, were straying from the actual problem domain and started applying more to an alternative piece of software.
I ended up with 3 really good innovations. (I'm sure others would think of these things instantly, but by God they were new to me!) One of these innovations would allow the software to perform a seeming completely different function with only trivial modifications - if it's built right.
There's a lot more to the book, as it talks about how to make the ideas to concrete solutions, walking through phases of idea-to-solution. Again, posing each step a problem then using these free-flowing lists of solutions to find the most innovative answers to problems.
So, the pros:
1. The technique seems to work for me as an individual.
2. Trying it is cheap. You need a) the book and b) office supplies. You do not need a guru, a Change Process Facilitator, pure Tibetan mountain spring water, or to sacrifice a chicken.
3. There are probably 6 phases and numerous sub-phases in the full solution process. So there are other parts of the book that I didn't mention but are worthwhile. For example, he mentions that some people in the organization may work against you. Commendably honest. Such a person is treated as a problem to be solved. You write this person's name down so you can make lists of solutions to this persons behavior. This section is short and I can't help but feel he stopped short for political correctness - and perhaps legal reasons!
The cons:
1. The book is almost certainly a sales tool for the author's consulting company which he mentions repeatedly. Perhaps the book is an answer to the problem, "How can we educate people about our system and thus make more money?" in which case it's a very practical proof of concept!
2. I can't imagine a team of people using this technique because it feels 'new age.' You'd have to have a lot of trust among coworkers.
3. The book is repetitious. Make lists! Make lists! Blah.
4. TMCBSHA. I mean, Too Many Cute Business Self Help Acronyms. The industrial strength solution he discusses has many phases and sub-phases. It seems like every one of them as some hokey acronym associated with it. examples:
IF (imagined future)
DRIVE (do, restrictions, investment, values, essential outcomes)
AIM (advantages, impediments, maybes)
Now, each of these sections may be worthwhile but my god it's killing me. This is what makes me suspicious about the technique. I feel like he's putting the sizzle before the steak. I don't need sizzle to work a problem. But Hurson might need it to sell his book!
5. The numerous steps (and their acronyms!) in the full solution need to be in a diagram so I can follow them.
Finally, if you make your living by thinking (versus, say, by chopping off ninja heads) and you're in a rut, consider _Think Better, an Innovator's guide to Productive Thinking_ by Tim Hurson. I give it a 4 of 5, where no such book can possibly score a 5 due to the built-in hokiness and cheerleading of it all.
http://tony-stormcrow.blogspot.com/2008/10/think-better-innovators-guide-to.html
Excellent Book for thinking better September 26, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The last book from my `vacation reading list" is Think Better: An Innovator's Guide to Productive Thinking by Tim Hurson. Some of you may remember a brief mention of this book in a post titled "Critical Thinking vs Creative Thinking".
This is a very interesting book full of great information....kudos go to the author for writing in a style that is engaging and easy to read.
The premise of the book is to stop trying to think `creatively' or `critically'....start thinking productively. The author introduces the "Productive Thinking Model" that helps to combine and balance both creative thinking and critical thinking.
This model is made up of six steps, which are outlined below.
Step 1: What's going on?
In this step, you are encouraged to answer five questions to get a feel for what issue you are trying to resolve. These questions are:
* What's the Itch? This question helps you determine what needs to be fixed or improved.
* What's the Impact? This question makes you think about how the issue is affecting you.
* What's the Information?This question forces you to examine the information that you have about the issue to determine if you have enough information to address the issue.
* Who's Involved? This question takes a look at the stakeholders and what might be at stake for each one.
* What's the Vision?This question helps you make the switch from `what is' to `what might be' by asking things like "What would the future look like if the issue is resolved?"
Step 2: What's Success?
Using the Vision developed in Step 1, begin to think about the future if the issue is resolved. Begin to imagine what life would be like with the problem solved. Once you've got a good feel for how life might change, you would then create a list specific, measurable outcomes.
Step 3: What's The Question?
In step 3, you begin to develop the questions that must be answered in order to reach the vision of success that you developed in Steps 1 & 2. During this step, you rephrase each issue/problem as a question to help your subconscious understand there is something `to work on'. An example conversion given as the Problem Statement "We don't have enough budget" can be converted to the Problem Question "How might we increase our budget?". During this step, you would try to generate as many problem questions as possible....you want a long long list. Once you've exhaustively listed your questions, you can then begin to narrow them down to the two key questions that would have the most impact on the issue.
Step 4: Generate Answers
This is where you generate the ideas to answer the questions created in step 3. You again create a very long list of answers and then sift through them looking for the most ideal and promising answers.
Step 5: Forge the Solution
This step is where you take your most promising answers from step 4 and develop them into a robust solution.
Step 6: Align Resources
This final step requires you to identify the necessary steps and resources for implementing your solution. In addition, you ensure that all implementation steps are assigned to a designated resource who will be held accountable for their implementation.
With these six steps, the author has provided a framework for thinking more productively. The key throughout all six steps is to keep an open mind at all times. Do not criticize ideas. Do not discard ideas. By keeping an open mind, you'll be amazed at how many ideas you are able to generate.
If you are the least bit interested in the topic of creative/critical thinking, go buy this book.
How to increase the ROI of innovative thinking August 6, 2008
17 out of 17 found this review helpful
Tim Hurson explains that the premise of this book "is that success in our business, professional, and personal lives is less a matter of what we know than of how we think. If we can develop the thinking skills to generate more options and then evaluate those options more effectively, we can all live richer, fuller lives - and so can the people around us." The focus of the this book is on the thinkx Productive Thinking Model (PTM), developed by Hurson and his colleagues after rigorously evaluating a number of other methodologies that include the Creative Problem Solving Process (CPS) and Integrated Definition (IDEF).
There seems to be greater emphasis on improving problem solving than on improving any other function of better thinking (e.g. generation, evaluation, and selection of innovative ideas), although the PTM process consists of six interlocking steps that can help to achieve a variety of objectives. Each step includes a variety of tools and techniques that Hurson explains, citing relevant real-world examples throughout his narrative to illustrate how various companies have used the PTM. Hurson devotes a separate chapter to each step.
For example, Step One responds to the question "What's Going On" and requires a situation analysis. Here are some issues to address at the stage of the process:
1. "What's the Itch?" (i.e. problem to be solved, question to be answered)
2. "What's the Impact?" (i.e. pay-off, benefits, improvements)
3. "What's the Information?" (i.e. what is currently known about the situation)
4. "Who's Involved?" (i.e. Who are the stakeholders? Who else will be affected?)
5. "What's the Vision [or "Target Future]?" (i.e. ultimate objective as well as its implications and consequences)
In Chapter 13, Hurson recaps the Productive Thinking Model (PTM) and offers a number of observations and suggestions to those who are considering use of this model as well as those who have made it commitment to it and are now engaged in the difficult but necessary processing of making appropriate modifications of it to accommodate the needs, resources, and objectives of their own organization. Then in Chapter 14, Hurson suggests four essential criteria for developing productive thinking skills and embedding productive thinking in organizational cultures.
In this final chapter, he also asserts that -- as practiced in much of corporate America -- training "is an astonishing waste of resources" when there is no follow-through on front-end training to embed and then strengthen even more the skills taught. In fact, the word "training" has lost its meaning because it is now more commonly used to refer to information transfer rather than skill development. "Hurson prefers the word "entraining." Why? "In chemistry, to entrain means to trap suspended particles in a solution and carry them along. This concept is an apt metaphor for skill development...Entraining results in a new and different workflow. Keeping those new skill particles suspended in your workflow requires the forging of new synaptic connections, new neural pathways."
Hurson includes an especially apt quotation that I now use also when concluding this review:
"In theory there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is." Yogi Berra
* * * * *
Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out Tom Kelley's discussion of how IDEO conducts brainstorming sessions in his two books, The Art of Innovation and The Ten Faces of Innovation. I also recommend two of Henry Chesbrough's books, Open Innovation and Open Business Models, as well as John Medina's Brain Rules, Howard Gardner's Five Minds for the Future, and Creativity in Business co-authored by Michael Ray and Rochelle Myers. Those feeling especially frisky and convinced they are up to the intellectual challenge are encouraged to consider reading Gerald Edelman's Bright Air, Brilliant Fire and Albert Borgmann's Holding On to Reality. Most of these books are available in a paperback edition.
this book would be better if... July 24, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
what a fascinating book! unfortunately it is littered with typographical errors which are REALLY irritating. examples: "The stem brain or gator brain processes and teacts to sensory input(p. 21)"..."Nothing is perfect. The word is full of things we can do better(p.7)."..."As Nicholas Negoponte, the founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab, has written...(p.43)"
such a shame. if there is ever a second printing, perhaps these and other unnecessary errors can be corrected.
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