The Markets
If you think Russia
could have found a colder place to hold the winter Olympics than Sochi, where
the average January 2014 temperature was 51° Fahrenheit, you’re right. In some Siberian
towns, negative double-digit temperatures are considered the norm during winter
months. If you thought Russia sending troops into Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula
would unsettle world markets, you would have been wrong.
While the world
was watching the winter Olympics, the Ukrainian people were staging a revolution.
They ousted President Viktor Yanukovych and, according to The Economist, Ukraine’s new leaders began forming pro-European
government. Russia’s president Vladimir Putin asked the Russian parliament for
permission to deploy troops in Ukraine. America warned there would be
consequences for such an action.
Regardless, Mr.
Putin persisted, perhaps believing the West will be more “worried about keeping
Russian oil and gas exports flowing than about standing up for the idea of a
Europe whole and free.” It’s probably fair to say neither the winter Olympics
nor reality TV about housewives in any county or city has ratcheted up the
drama in the way Mr. Putin did last week.
So, how did
markets respond? Six world indices lost value last week (in Australia, Japan,
China, Indonesia, United Kingdom, and Mexico), 17 showed gains, and one remained
unchanged.
Why were markets
so bullish? According to Barron’s, markets
in the United States focused on strong consumer confidence data, evidence of
sales growth for durable goods, and new Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen remarking
the last six weeks of economic data have been surprisingly weak (which some
hoped could signal a pause in tapering).
There are only 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary numbers and those who don't. The joke
is funnier when you understand that 10 in the binary system is the same as the
decimal number two.
There
are two distinct ways of thinking, too, and both appear to be essential to
companies that are trying to turn a profit through innovation. In an article
about the World’s most innovative companies, FastCompany.com had this to say about innovation:
“…But there's another kind of faith in
business: The belief that a product or service can radically remake an
industry, change consumer habits, challenge economic assumptions. Proof for
such innovative leaps is thin, payoffs are long in coming (if they come at
all), and doubting Thomases abound. Today, pundits fret about an innovation
bubble. Some overvalued companies and overhyped inventions will eventually
tumble and money will be lost. Yet breakthrough progress often requires
wide-eyed hope.”
Perhaps it’s less
of a hope and more of a commitment to fostering both divergent and convergent
thinking within a company, which probably is not an easy thing to do. Divergent
thinking is the process of generating many ideas related to a single subject or
many solutions for a specific problem. For instance, strong divergent thinkers
can come up with dozens of answers for questions like: How many uses can you
think of for a knife and a brick? As it turns out, young children are terrific
divergent thinkers. A longitudinal study of kindergarten children found that 98
percent of them were genius level divergent thinkers. By fifth grade, that percentage
had dwindled to 50 percent or so. After another five years, even fewer were
strong divergent thinkers.
Convergent
thinking, on the other hand, is the process of applying rules to arrive at a
single correct solution to a problem or a limited number of ways to address a
specific issue. Convergent thinking occurs in a more systematic and linear
manner. Strong convergent thinkers rely on analysis, criticism, logic, argument,
and reasoning to narrow down options and choose a path forward.
According to Psychology Today, “The highest levels of
creativity require both convergent thinking and divergent thinking. This idea
has long been known in creativity research… creativity involves a cyclical
process of generating ideas and then systematically working out which ideas are
most fruitful and implementing them. The generation stage is thought to involve
divergent thinking whereas the exploration stage is thought to involve
convergent thinking.”
Weekly Focus – Think
About It
“Everybody gets so much information all day long that they
lose their common sense.”
--Gertrude Stein, American writer
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