Book Review: Rebel Ideas @matthewsyed
Syed wrote “Black Box Thinking” and “Rebel Ideas” is a sequel or the second part in a three-part series. There is more to come. He builds on many of the original ideas and adds great new content and concepts. Fabulous book and worth spending 15 hours with.
The core concept is that other than a very few humans, Einstein, Scroties, Lovelace, are we able to create either a new idea or an entire idea. Diverse thinking is actually required. Diversity of thought is that you bring in different experiences, perspectives, values and skills - and in doing so you will expand the possible and probable.
The link to this for me is that good governance requires a diversity of thinking.
He thankfully deals with strong leadership and overpowering processes to be clear that this means that you get a diverse possibility but a single person outcome. Strong, as in domineering leadership does not support diverse outcomes. Strong, as in servant leadership does create fertile grounds for rebel ideas.
Personally, Syed is a kindred spirit for me. If you are already on a spectrum you have this thinking as part of your framework, and there will not be a lot of new ideas, but it is a comfort blanket. Definitely an education tool for those who have only ever followed a traditional academic route, gaining top grades, did a grad scheme and now cannot work out why others have all the best ideas.
The final chapter is the best. The Big Picture. Conceptually we are now trying to comprehend complex adaptive systems where one single person or team cannot see or have access to all the information. The issues we need to address that need rebel ideas are at a new scale (climate change, politics, bias, poverty, sustainability). Therefore how do we collectively create new rebel ideas as humanity for humanity?
Love this visual of the book from Dani Saveker
