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The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking is a book written by Roger Martin and published by the Harvard Business Review Press in 2007. The book aims to introduce a concept of integrative thinking, using academic theory and insights from prominent business leaders to substantiate the idea.
Martin argues that, to emulate the world’s best leaders, people need to study how leaders think. He argues that integrative thinking is a common feature found in successful leaders. The book gives a working definition of integrative thinking as: “The ability to face constructively the tension of opposing ideas and, instead of choosing one at the expense of the other, generate a creative resolution of the tension in the form of a new idea that contains elements of the opposing ideas but is superior to each”.
Martin notes some of the major differences between integrative thinkers and conventional thinkers. Integrative thinkers: take a broad view of what is salient despite the increase it causes in the complexity of problems, consider multi-directional and non-linear causal relationships, keep the entire problem in mind while working on individual segments, and search for creative resolutions rather than accept trade offs.
In the second half of the book, Martin outlines how to develop integrative thinking capabilities. The three main components that make up the integrative thinkers' personal knowledge system are stance, tools and experience; “the tripod supporting the system”. Martin devotes a chapter to each element of the tripod, explaining their significance in the integrative thinker’s development and how they combine to create an effective integrative thinker.
Throughout the book, Martin studies the thought processes of prominent leaders, and for each chapter uses several examples outlining how the leader of interest used a particular aspect of integrative thinking to create a successful strategy.
The book has been noted for having a thesis that understands "that fresh thought processes are required to deal with the world's contradictions and complexities" [1] and has been praised for showing how great leaders think rather than what they do. [2] India’s Business Today argues that the book will “almost certainly enable you to go beyond the sort of reasoning taught at most B-schools.” [3]
The main criticism of the book has been its inability "to teach "generative reasoning" or to provide readers with specific conceptual tools and a knowledge system for integrative thinking." [4]
Integrative thinking is taught in MBA programs at several business schools, most notably the Rotman School. [5]
Critical thinking is the analysis of available facts, evidence, observations, and arguments to form a judgment. The subject is complex; several different definitions exist, which generally include the rational, skeptical, and unbiased analysis or evaluation of factual evidence. Critical thinking is self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective thinking, and accordingly, a critical thinker is one who practices the skills of critical thinking or has been schooled in its disciplines. Richard W. Paul has suggested that the mind of a critical thinker engages both the intellectual abilities and personal traits necessary for critical thinking. Critical thinking presupposes assent to rigorous standards of excellence and mindful command of their use. It entails effective communication and problem-solving abilities as well as a commitment to overcome native egocentrism and sociocentrism.
INSEAD, a contraction of "Institut Européen d'Administration des Affaires" is a non-profit business school that maintains campuses in Europe, Asia (Singapore), the Middle East, and North America. As a graduate-only business school, INSEAD offers a full-time Master of Business Administration, an executive MBA (EMBA), a Master of Finance, a PhD in management, a Master in Management, Business Foundations Post-Graduate degrees, and a variety of executive education programs.
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark is a 1995 book by the astrophysicist Carl Sagan and co-authored by Ann Druyan, in which the authors aim to explain the scientific method to laypeople and to encourage people to learn critical and skeptical thinking. They explain methods to help distinguish between ideas that are considered valid science and those that can be considered pseudoscience. Sagan states that when new ideas are offered for consideration, they should be tested by means of skeptical thinking and should stand up to rigorous questioning.
Integrative thinking is a field which was developed by Graham Douglas in 1986. He describes integrative thinking as the process of integrating intuition, reason and imagination in a human mind with the objective of developing a holistic continuum of strategy, tactics, action, review and evaluation. Integrative thinking may be learned by applying the SOARA process to any problem. The SOARA Process facilitates associations between what may have been regarded as unrelated parts of a problem.
The Joseph L. Rotman School of Management is the University of Toronto's graduate business school, located in Downtown Toronto. The University of Toronto has been offering undergraduate courses in commerce and management since 1901, but the business school was formally established in 1950 as the Institute of Business Administration. The name was changed to the Faculty of Management Studies in 1972 and subsequently shortened to the Faculty of Management in 1986. The school was renamed in 1997 after Joseph L. Rotman (1935–2015), its principal benefactor.
Strategic thinking is a mental or thinking process applied by an individual in the context of achieving a goal or set of goals. As a cognitive activity, it produces thought.
Design thinking refers to the set of cognitive, strategic and practical procedures used by designers in the process of designing, and to the body of knowledge that has been developed about how people reason when engaging with design problems.
Cranfield School of Management, established in 1967, is a business school that is part of Cranfield University in Bedfordshire, United Kingdom. It was ranked Top 10 in the UK and 34th in Europe in the Financial Times European Business Schools 2021 rankings. Cranfield School of Management is triple accredited by the Association of MBAs (AMBA), EQUIS and AACSB. Cranfield University, the UK's only wholly postgraduate university, specialises in science, technology, engineering, and management.
Seyed Mohammad Hossein Adeli is an Iranian politician, diplomat, economist and academic. He was the Secretary General of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum from 2014 until 2018. He is the founder of Ravand Institute. He was the chairman of Iran's first Investment Bank Amin Investment Bank until 2011. In May 2014, he received the Order of the Rising Sun from the Emperor of Japan, Akihito, the highest Order given to any Iranian National for his important role in the Iran–Japan Relation.
Roger Martin is the former Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto from 1998 to 2013 and an author of several business books. Martin has expanded several important business concepts in use today, including integrative thinking. He has been recognized by several business publications as one of the field's most important thinkers.
Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control is a 2004 popular science book explaining mind control, which is also known as brainwashing, thought reform and coercive persuasion, by neuroscientist and physiologist Kathleen Taylor. It explains the neurological basis for reasoning and cognition in the brain, and proposes that the self is changeable, and describes the physiology of neurological pathways. It reviews case studies including Patty Hearst, the Manson Family, and the mass murder/suicide of members of Peoples Temple at Jonestown, and compares the techniques of influence used by cults to those of totalitarian and communist societies. It lays out a model FACET – Freedom, Agency, Complexity, Ends-not-means, and Thinking – which she believes can be used to negate the influence of brainwashing techniques.
The Manchester Independent Economic Review (MIER) is the independent economic review of a city region. The Review was launched in June 2008 by Secretary of State Hazel Blears and Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling and published its findings on 6 April 2009.
The Stephen M. Ross School of Business, also known as Michigan Ross, is the business school of the University of Michigan, a public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Founded in 1924, the school is ranked among the best business schools in the world by The Economist, Financial Times, QS World University Rankings, U.S. News & World Report, and Bloomberg Businessweek.
The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage is a 2009 book by Roger Martin, Dean of the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management. In the book, Martin describes the concept of design thinking, and how companies can incorporate it into their organizational structure for long term innovation and results.
The Lords of Strategy is a book by Walter Kiechel III, a business journalist, former editorial director of the Harvard Business Review and former managing editor of Fortune magazine, which presents the analysis of strategy evolution since the 1960s. The book was published by Harvard Business Press in March 2010. It was longlisted for the 2010 Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award.
The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail, first published in 1997, is the best-known work of the Harvard professor and businessman Clayton Christensen. It expands on the concept of disruptive technologies, a term he coined in a 1995 article "Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave". It describes how large incumbent companies lose market share by listening to their customers and providing what appears to be the highest-value products, but new companies that serve low-value customers with poorly developed technology can improve that technology incrementally until it is good enough to quickly take market share from established business. Christensen recommends that large companies maintain small, nimble divisions that attempt to replicate this phenomenon internally to avoid being blindsided and overtaken by startup competitors.
Abraham Zaleznik (1924–2011) was a leading scholar and teacher in the field of organizational psychodynamics and the psychodynamics of leadership.
Stuart Crainer is an author, editor, adviser and entrepreneur.
Des Dearlove is a British business journalist and management theorist, known for his work on the history and state-of-the-art of management theory.
Martin Ford is a futurist and author focusing on artificial intelligence and robotics, and the impact of these technologies on the job market, economy and society.