Crafting as an Innovative Thinking Skill.

F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”

Innovation requires us to shed either/or thinking and see the whole as inclusive of opposition and open to a third (or fourth or fifth) solution. The practice of crafting allows us to live with and resolve paradox and contradiction.

Unlike the traditional analysis of business thinking— which requires us to break down problems into separate pieces, known facts, and current assumptions— crafting is about synthesis, integration, and possibility. Through what is called abductive reasoning, we can make intuitive connections among seemingly unrelated information and begin to shape order out of chaos.