Great article about what makes a great strategic thinker!

Great article about what makes a great strategic thinker!

http://www.thinkers50.com/

How to Find a Good Idea

In the movie Working Girl, Tess, the lead character played by Melanie Griffith, comes up with a creative idea for how to accomplish a corporate merger, but as a mere “working girl” she is not in a position to get her idea heard. Katherine, the villainess of the story played by Sigourney Weaver, does have a position of influence and puts Tess’s idea forth as her own. In the pivotal scene of the movie, Tess gains access to the company CEO (through Harrison Ford’s kind assistance) and tells him how she conceived of the idea: she was reading a gossip column in a tabloid newspaper, turned to the business pages, and had an epiphany. She saw a connection of ideas that she realized would apply to the strategic situation confronting the company.

When confronted, Katherine cannot account for how the solution occurred to her. She has no “epiphanal moment” to share. She cannot point to any preparation of mind or to any trigger or stimulus that would plausibly lead to the conception of an idea. The lack of a trail of thoughts “proves” that the idea was not hers. The wise CEO recognizes this, gives Tess a desirable job, and bumps Katherine out of the company as the movie moves to a satisfying Hollywood ending. That ending is believable because the notion of a trail of thoughts as a prerequisite for an idea—a period of preparation followed by a burst of inspiration—is consistent with the way people replace old thinking with new.

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