Seeing What Others Don't: The remarkable ways we gain INSIGHTS

The next question—and there is always a next question (you never get to the last question because there isn’t a last question)

the concept of an ambidextrous organization—one that pursues efficiency and reduces errors for mature products while encouraging innovation and creativity in other areas. The trick is to keep the two approaches separate. The efficiency group and the innovation group would report to the same manager but would otherwise run independently of each othe

It happened gradually. So this is a “routinization of deviance” story. These are cases in which an anomalous event gets repeated often enough to become familiar so that it no longer triggers any warnings.

Garden path stories are how someone adopts an erroneous frame and tenaciously preserves it despite mounting evidence to the contrary.

In the last thirty years, American industry unintentionally performed a large-scale natural experiment. Major corporations went all in on the down arrow. The name of the experiment was Six Sigma.

The inventor of Post-it notes, one of 3M’s best-known product development stories, concluded that his work never could have emerged if a Six Sigma process had been in place.

the doctrine of continual transformation runs counter to the emergence of insights. Advocating for continual or even periodic transformation makes it into a routine to be performed. In contrast, insights are accidental.

original goals may turn out to be inappropriate or they may become obsolete. But managers may be incapable of abandoning their original goals. They may be seized by goal fixation.

collecting examples of insights and discoveries, much as in the cases I collected. The team could disseminate the best examples every month to encourage others and to show that the organization values the insights of its members.