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The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking
China has matured as a market—and the game has changed. Yesterday, multinationals grappled with fundamental strategic choices: Do we go to China? Whom do we partner with? Where should we invest? Winning in China was all about achieving approval to enter the market, picking the right joint venture partner and selling in the right few cities to the right customers. Execution...more
Hardcover, 224 pages
Published
October 29th 2007
by Harvard Business Review Press
(first published 2007)
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The key idea behind this book is to help business thinkers see beyond the obvious tradeoffs. The author proposes that it is integrative thinking that is the force behind some of the most innovative and successful models that are driving new growth. The cases cited include RedHat, Issy Sharps' Four Seasons Hotels, AG Lafley of Procter & Gamble, Meg Whitman of eBay, Victoria Hale of the Institute for One World Health. When some of these cases are presented in the form of a narrative or a case...more
What do you say to a book that mixes politics and modern dance? This is an interesting book and well worth the time to read. For anyone putting together a business model or trying to reinvent the workplace this book is a great read. It has a further reach in that it is a reminder that in a modern civics situation where taxes and government are compared to a million other things we are reminded that those comparisons don't weigh anything other than the politics: we can be good stewards of public...more
The basic idea of the book is that tension between seemingly conflicting ideas can lead to better ideas, but you need to make the effort to really engage the conflicting ideas. This is perhaps at the heart of Martin's conception of Integrative Thinking; it's not just another name for "interdisciplinarity" as I once thought.
Roger kindly refers to me in page xi of the Acknowledgements: " A former student, Dave Eden, introduced me to a century-old Science article by Thomas Chamberlin that figured m...more
Roger kindly refers to me in page xi of the Acknowledgements: " A former student, Dave Eden, introduced me to a century-old Science article by Thomas Chamberlin that figured m...more
Not a bad book, but probably goes into more detail than most people would need. The best insight is that our brains have a tendency to oversimplify (limit the size) and overspecialize (limit the scope) problems to make them easier to solve. But then the solution is limited in size and scope. He wants us to practice reserving judgment on decisions and concentrate on expanding the size and scope to find bigger, more powerful solutions. One method for doing this is the play devil's advocate with ou...more
Never believe you must settle for this OR that. Martin breaks down case by case how the best minds always design an option that includes this AND that. This may be a business book (and I may want to move to Canada just to take a class with this guy at Toronto) but it can read like a self-help book for someone like me, i.e. operating with two ideas in my head almost constantly. Read this and rest assured that with the proper training we can all learn to see the third option no one is talking abou...more
I was expecting this to be another cheesy business book all about how to be successful if only you follow these tens steps... Instead it was actually quite insightful with a clear guide of the benefits to being able to hold contradicting ideas in your head and ruminate on them to come up with new innovative solutions.
The author blew my mind in the first few chapters when he clearly pointed out that what we think of as reality, is just a model of reality we construct with the bits of data we can...more
The author blew my mind in the first few chapters when he clearly pointed out that what we think of as reality, is just a model of reality we construct with the bits of data we can...more
I noticed this in a bookshop when the phrase "integrative thinking" had been floating around my thinking for a little while. So I was intrigued about how someone would define this concept and discuss its usefulness.
The author is the Dean of Toronto's main business school and he writes about how organization leaders use "integrative thinking" to come up with novel and successful solutions.
There are times when the author's definition can seem a bit too close to the old trope of "these, antithese,...more
The author is the Dean of Toronto's main business school and he writes about how organization leaders use "integrative thinking" to come up with novel and successful solutions.
There are times when the author's definition can seem a bit too close to the old trope of "these, antithese,...more
I named my consulting business "Creative Option C" to stand for the alternative that people must create whenever they appear to be deadlocked between two other choices. For example, House Republicans are insisting that lowering taxes and cutting entitlement spending is the only way to reduce the deficit and grow the economy. President Obama and Senate Democrats say that ending tax cuts for the wealthiest among us and investing more in the middle class in the short term is the path to the same en...more
This is a must read for anyone wanting to understand how to leverage creative thinking and understand how to come up with "and" solutions instead of "either or." The main concept is built upon a feedback system of salience, causality, architecture, and resolution. An integrative thinker will consider more features of a problem salient, consider multidirectional and nonlinear causality, visual the whole while working on individual parts, and search for creative resolutions of tensions. Another ma...more
The idea here is that you shouldn't settle for an "or" situation, the "zero-sum" solution, but rather look for integrative solutions that enable both 'sides' of an issue. Certainly easier said than done, though the author is able to cite some fairly impressive examples along these lines. Not the most fascinating read, but worth taking up merely to stretch one's mind in a couple new directions. It does contain reasonably tactical advice for how to achieve opposable thinking.
A snippit from Robert Morris's review on Amazon.com
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As I began to read this brilliant book, I was reminded of what Doris Kearns reveals about Abraham Lincoln in Team of Rivals. Specifically, that following his election as President in 1860, Lincoln assembled a cabinet whose members included several of his strongest political opponents: Edwin M. Stanton as Secretary of War (who had called Lincoln a "long armed Ape"), William H. Seward as...more
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As I began to read this brilliant book, I was reminded of what Doris Kearns reveals about Abraham Lincoln in Team of Rivals. Specifically, that following his election as President in 1860, Lincoln assembled a cabinet whose members included several of his strongest political opponents: Edwin M. Stanton as Secretary of War (who had called Lincoln a "long armed Ape"), William H. Seward as...more
Excellent book. So good, in fact, that I read it twice. Essentially breaks down the fact that in business, successful leaders don't choose between either/or situations, they find distinct value in a new option that takes the best of both without any of the tradeoffs. Well written and a quick read.
Apr 09, 2013
Rachel Winchester
added it
Examples of how researchers combined resources with constraints and by imposing a novel framework unseen by others, created new and valuable solutions others had overlooked. Talks about the importance of struggling with the tension between ideas to see new opportunities. --Kurt
I read this book immediately after "Five Minds for the Future" and found quite a lot of synergy between "Integrative Thinking" and Gardner's Synthesizing and Creating "Minds". In some ways, you could view it as an extension of these two separate concepts.
The first couple chapters are 4.5 stars -- it's the usual business book thing, great ideas up-front, some decent examples, then runs out of steam. Still a good characterization of thinking, enough examples to make it not easy but worth the reward and an interesting image (opposable like the thumb).
Interesting outlook on transforming solutions from this "or" that, to this "AND" that. Great way to look at transforming conventional thinking to integrative thinking.
The Opposable Mind by Roger Martin is rich with useful thinking about decision-making. I checked it out of the library but purchased my own copy.
I appreciated the inspiration of the case studies and his attempt to breakdown the thinking behind them. The second half of the book lost me.
Most solutions are trade-offs between non-ideal choices. The best solutions are those that integrate seemingly opposing choices.
Creativity requires openness, flexibility, and spontaneity ... Great quote from a great book
The concept of taking two opposing models, and creating a brand new model is intriguing.
Important to read for anyone interested in understanding design thinking.
Interesting, logical and convincing. Brilliant? I don't know about that but if Malcom Gladwell says it is so I guess I'll defer to him. At any rate, this is a good read for people in the business world. The real world examples of leaders applying integrative thinking were very useful. Overall a decent and quick read.
Learn about integrative thinking and it's value in business.
I wanted to like this book but the more I read the more I realized that I had heard it all before and so rather than sounding fresh and exciting, The Oppossable Mind just sounded like parts of Freakanomics, Outliers, The Tipping Point and others. There were some memorable examples of how creative problem solving can lead to great results, but I personally lost my way about a third of the way through this one and never got back on track. Another positive aspect for me was found in several of the...more
See, I told you--all great leaders are Lutheran.
Excellent! Bound to be a classic!
short, concise with a lot of insight.
Good tips and lessons through stories.
I appreciated the practical nature of the last three chapters. As a liner, non-integrative thinker, I am looking forward to focusing on some of these habits to become a more creative and effective problem-solver.
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