Saturday, March 27, 2010

The value of aproblem: finance.

From George Soros' book "The Alchemy of Finance" (2003 paper back edition):

The major insight I gained ... is that all human constructs (concepts, business plans or institutional arrangements) are flawed. The flaws may be revealed only after the construct has come into existence... Recognizing the flaws that are likely to appear when a hypothesis becomes reality puts you ahead of the game. p. 37.

This is a good argument for starting a project with Reverse Brainstorming, a technique I've developed to search for problems rather than solutions. In a Reverse Brainstorming session participants are required to generate a 50+ problems within an hour; 100 is my preferred number. The vast majority of the flaws discovered during the session will never be exposed, or will never become important enough to entail a corrective action. But there will be several that will reveal critical issues. Understanding and inventing ways to address them will put us ahead of the game.

tags: reverse brainstorm, method, problem, solution, high value, money

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