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Assumptions prevent us from seeing opportunities
Have you ever been woken up by the fact that you have missed opportunities only because you have made false assumptions about how things are? Assumptions are ideas or models we create in our head for explaining why some things are the way they are, or why some things work the way the work. These assumptions are usually based on what we have actually seen happening. The more we gain experience of something, the more we create assumptions regarding it.
The assumptions we make, serve us in our everyday life - they help us making analysis and decisions faster. Too often, however, assumptions limit our thinking seriously when we need to come up with new ideas! We do not even notice how we start assuming things when we start generating new ideas. Therefore it is very difficult to recognize our assumption.
While trying to generate new ideas in order to solve problems, one good way of liberating ourselves from the assumptions we have, is to list all our assumptions on paper regarding the topic. Then we need to consciously start thinking what would it mean, if some, or all, of these assumptions were false. Doing this will lead us thinking of the problem from completely new aspects, which may just be needed for coming up with a new solution! This method is called assumption busting.
When have you busted your assumptions the previous time?
Tagit
Innovations Assumptions, ideas, models everyday life
1 kommenttia
Great post, Mikko! Recently, I participated a session where the facilitators challenged us to pinpoint, write down and then abandon one of our pre-assumptions by actually throwing it to a waste basket. Well, I said to my collague next to me: "Hey, I have a scientific backround and I rely on facts", with a certain degree of annoyance in my voice. "I do not have pre-assumptions!" I declared.
My collague said: "Well, there you go, you do have at least one!"... I was caught with my pants down, and we both had big laughs :))
Lesson learned: We all do have our assumptions that limit our thinking....:)
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