Diaminds: Decoding the Mental Habits of Successful Thinkers

by Mihnea C. Moldoveanu, Roger L. Martin

What constitutes successful thinking in business? What are some of the techniques used by top business minds in order to solve problems and create value? Diaminds breaks new ground in addressing these questions. Mihnea Moldoveanu and Roger Martin, creators of the Integrative Thinking curriculum at the Rotman School of Management, draw upon case studies and interviews - as well as theories and models from cognitive psychology, epistemology, analytic philosophy, and semiotics - to offer a new conception of successful intelligence that is immediately applicable to business situations. The 'diamind' (or dialogical mind) is characterized by bi-stability (simultaneously holding opposite plans, models, courses of action in mind while retaining the ability to act), meliorism (increasing the logical depth and informational breadth of one's thinking processes), choicefulness (retaining the ability to choose among various representations of the world, the self and others) and polyphony (thinking about the way one formulates and solves a problem while at the same time thinking about the problem itself). End-of-chapter exercises encourage readers to examine and re-engineer their own thought and perception patterns to develop these qualities and cultivate their own 'diaminds.'

Genres: Business, Psychology, Self Help, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Personal Development

256 pages, Hardcover

First published November 28, 2009

Reviews

[Vince · Rating 2 out of 5]

The core idea - that brilliant folks are capable of holding multiple opposing truths in their minds at the same time - got lost for me amidst breezy prose and just-so stories. Started this early in the year, but it lost my interest about half-way through. Skim a library copy.

[Mario Sailer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am a bit ambivalent about this book. It started out promising and it has some good points, but at times a bit more background about people or theories mentioned would be helpful. The book made me "think about thinking while thinking" - sometimes. But it also has passages that explained simple concepts complicated, like the concept of awareness / consciousness / mindfulness or however you want to call it. The concept of becoming aware of what we do instead of running on autopilot and getting steered by our deep ingrained (once learned) believes, our habits and rituals. Its not exactly written this way but its one of the concepts the book is aiming for (in my perception).

[Dave Bolton · Rating 2 out of 5]

The core concepts of this book (chiefly, that you need to exert effort to think about thinking if you want to achieve your mind's potential) are strong, but the execution is weak. There are incredible diversions and unnecessary extra editorial comments everywhere, and the result is a book probably almost twice as long as it needs to be. Disappointing -- all it needed was a ruthless editor and it could have been a good book.

[Vicky · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great idea - how to think about thinking, but poor execution. Lots of unrelated rambling. There was one part the author listed some maths models and I was expecting some brilliant non-math interpretations, but he just skipped them altogether...

[Colin Larcombe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting though not sure how I can apply it

[Mohit Joshi · Rating 4 out of 5]

An extremely complicated book. I recently met Roger Martin and he said that it is one of his most sophisticated books and probably only thousand people will ever read it :) . However, some very good ideas are presented.

[Natalie Lowe · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am certain the authors have the very best of intentions, however they wrote in such a way to make the ideas very convoluted. I really did not enjoy this book at all and I don't feel that I learned a lot from reading it.

[Johan · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of the best reads ever - combines economics, computer science, and psychology in a way that is practical