Smart Thinking: How to Think Big, Innovate and Outperform Your Rivals

by Art Markman

Smart Thinking: The Ability to Solve New Problems Using Your Current Knowledge

SMART THINKING REQUIRES DEVELOPING SMART HABITS TO ACQUIRE HIGH-QUALITY KNOWLEDGE AND TO APPLY YOUR KNOWLEDGE TO ACHIEVE YOUR GOALS

McCormack himself had stumbled on the role of Applying Knowledge. His personal philosophy has been quoted as, “Be the best, learn the business, and expand by applying what you already know.” In his case, by recognizing the similarities between athletes and movie stars, McCormack generated a whole new field.

Despite the success of this design, few of us type on Dvorak keyboards. Instead, the QWERTY keyboard has remained the standard. The story of keyboards is a classic example of path dependence.

That is the essence of smart habits. The cognitive system is designed as much as possible not to think.

Smart Habits enable you to perform desirable behaviors automatically.

This introduction to habits has two key lessons. First, the key signature of a habit is that it is an action you can perform automatically without having to think about it consciously. Second, most of the time, your habits are Smart Habits. It is unfortunate that we often use the word habit to refer to behaviors that you want to change. Without habits, our lives would be a frustrating daily focus on the most basic tasks of life. Habits are a crucial part of Smart Thinking.

Smart Habits are not merely recommended for Smart Thinking, they are central to it.

To stop an old behavior, then, you must not only prevent the habitual behavior from being performed but also deal with the goal that is activated by the situation.

Role of 3 before, during, and after

So pay attention. Don’t multitask.

Psychologists call the ability to generate explanations for things causal reasoning. Why does an understanding of causes matter?

The reason we care about causal knowledge is because it is crucial for solving new problems.

causal knowledge is exactly the kind of High-Quality Knowledge you need for Smart Thinking.

You have probably heard it said that it is important to know what you know and to know what you don’t know. As it turns out, it is also important to know who knows what you don’t know.

illusion of explanatory depth.

There is an old saying in education that the best way to learn something is to teach it to someone else. Indeed, a cornerstone of medical education is: See one. Do one. Teach one.

Your ability to reuse old knowledge in new situations is rooted in your capacity to find similarities between new experiences and ones that you have encountered in the past.

The principle that Archimedes discovered is now called the Law of Displacement.

The essayist George Santayana is credited with the following quotation: “Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” To use the past, though, it is crucial to figure out which elements of the past are important for understanding the present and future, because the past does not repeat itself precisely.

The brain is a very energy-hungry organ that makes up only about 2 percent of your body weight, but uses about 20 percent of the energy that your body consumes each day.

At its core, Smart Thinking does not require you to think differently but to think about different things.

If other people raise objections to your idea, start by thinking carefully about those objections before deciding that they will not influence the success of your solution. You may ultimately decide that the objection is not significant, but you should start by taking it seriously. In addition, you may refine your idea by reflecting carefully on the objections other people raise. In this way, you can help yourself prepare for obstacles you may face in the future.

Being open helps the group to capture the best components of each idea of the group’s members.

it is important that people treat any gaps they identify in their knowledge as invitations to learn more.

TITLE OF PRESENTATION:_______________ List three key ideas in the presentation: 1. 2. 3. ORGANIZING THE PRESENTATION Describe each key idea in one sentence: 1. 2. 3. DEVELOP KEY IDEAS. FIND RELATIONSHIPS 1. How is Idea 1 related to what people already know? 2. How is Idea 2 related to what people already know, including Idea 1? 3. How is Idea 3 related to what people already know, including Ideas 1 and 2? Three questions to help people remember and self-explain ideas. 1. 2. 3.

If a statement is made you do not understand, that is the speaker’s fault, not yours.

Negotiating the meaning of terms helps create a Culture of Smart.