Skip to Content
The Opposable Mind
book

The Opposable Mind

by Roger L. Martin
July 2009
Beginner
224 pages
4h 44m
English
Harvard Business Review Press
Content preview from The Opposable Mind

C H A P T E R 3

Reality, Resistance, and Resolution

How Integrative Thinkers               Keep Their Options Open

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

—Albert Einstein

IF INTEGRATIVE THINKING is such a good idea, why don’t people use their opposable minds all the time? Craig Wynett, head of corporate new ventures at Procter & Gamble, answers with a great metaphor; he blames our “factory setting.”1 Like your car’s ignition timing, your computer’s screen brightness, or your washing machine’s spin cycle, your mind emerges from the factory set for a specific mode and speed of operation. Few factory settings ever get adjusted, and many of us wouldn’t know how to change them if we wanted to—hence all those VCRs forever flashing ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

The Unspoken Rules

The Unspoken Rules

Gorick Ng
The Upside of Uncertainty

The Upside of Uncertainty

Nathan Furr, Susannah Harmon Furr
What's Your Problem?

What's Your Problem?

Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg
A New Way to Think

A New Way to Think

Roger L. Martin

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781422148105