Thinking techniques
Reframing
Benefits of reframing
- A thorough analysis of common presuppositions underlying key assumptions in our work
- Creative exploration of new possibilities by questioning presuppositions
- A visual mapping process
- Based on groundbreaking research in logic and the philosophy of science by Quine and Kuhn.
Introduction to reframing
In our minds, creativity is linked to freedom, to thinking out-of-the-box, to innovation and to novelty. We are creative when we can think differently than we usually do, when we invent something new or find a new way of looking at things. The classical technique for creative thinking is the brainstorm technique, where we free-associate and come up with a large number of new ideas. The brainstorm technique is very useful for generating a lot of ideas, but it does not take us out of our mental comfort zone, our thinking “frame”. Through free association we stretch ourselves, but we stay within the frame.
To be truly creative, to think what we have not yet thought before, we must find a way to step outside our frame. If we steer our thinking according to a fixed method to where it does not want to go, we can be sure we are forcing our thinking outside of its frame.