
We watched this TED Talk yesterday over lunch and, while Derek Sivers takes us on a cool 3 minute ride, his idea worth spreading would not surprise a Ninja in the Patterns of Thinking Method. What's Sivers' Big Idea? Americans name streets; Japanese name blocks. Maybe things
aren't weird, just different.
A Ninja in the Patterns of Thinking Method would immediately see Distinctions and Perspectives at play. Even the 2nd graders in this video know that any idea is a Distinction and has the structure of Identity/Other. As soon as we name an idea (identity), we're also implying its other. We tend to miss out on the other, just like the American missed the NOT street and the Japanese missed the NOT block.
But what are we missing when we forget the other? In the example of this map,

the implications of poor Distinction-making weren't terribly earth-shattering.

Cool! If you switch from an American to a Japanese perspective, identity and other flip-flop.
But what are we really missing when name the Identity but not the Other? We're missing half of everything, including opportunities for tremendous innovation. Creativity and innovation are topics we've blogged about before, but another example recently caught my eye. Or more accurately, my ear.
Once upon a time in music, performers played song into a microphone and onto tape. They were admonished to "Keep the signal loud enough. You don't want empty tape!" Common wisdom held that NOT signal would make your song sound lousy.
Well, over time some recording artists started thinking long and hard about the NOT signal. "What's it called? How can we use it? Are there cool things happening over there?" And a new genre of music was born: Noise. Noise - the thing that was once not signal - now has its own history, journals, festivals, and fan base. Innovation, all because a few musicians decided to make better Distinctions and quit ignoring the other.

Street/NOT street....block/NOT block....that's cool. But it's barely scratching the surface of what the Patterns of Thinking Method can do. Now that's an idea worth spreading.


