Way back in 1637, French philosopher René Descartes set out to state an indisputable truth. His conclusion? “I think, therefore I am.”
Descartes’ statement may be beyond dispute. But what if the way we think has become outdated? If the unspoken, often unrealized assumptions that underpin our approaches to analyzing and solving challenges no longer work?
Do we need to rethink how we think?
Several recent books and popular pundits answer that question with a resounding “Yes!” Although they give the practice different names – non-obvious thinking, creative thinking, divergent thinking, and thinking differently – they agree that modern realities require new answers that can only be discovered by thinking in non-traditional ways.
“Old solutions for new problems barely work,” futurist Rohit Bhargava and high-tech venture capitalist Ben duPont wrote in their October 2024 book Non-Obvious Thinking: How to See What Others Miss. “We need people who see what others don’t, ask questions, and push back against the obvious status quo – people who have the empathy to put themselves in other people’s shoes without dismissing alternate perspectives as misguided.”
Bhargava and duPont argue that many brilliant solutions to modern challenges – ranging from climate change to resource shortages and the take-make-waste economy – are hidden behind outdated world views and assumptions we don’t even realize we hold.
“Non-obvious thinkers are the instigators who come up with bold, original ideas that propel all of us forward – and have the courage and determination to turn them into reality,” Bhargava and duPont wrote. “They are the ones who change things for the better. And every country on Earth is hungry for more of them.”
The power of thinking differently
To illustrate how non-obvious thinking works, Bhargava uses an example from the world of sports: the Fosbury Flop.
Never heard of it? Probably not. But if you watch international competitions, you’re sure to have seen it. The high-jump technique dates to the 1968 Mexico City games, when 21-year-old American Dick Fosbury set a new world record by clearing the bar back first. Until Fosbury, no one had ever jumped this way; today, everybody does.
What inspired Fosbury to turn the sport of high-jumping backwards? In part, it was due to a change in the mat that jumpers landed on, from a bag filled with sawdust or wood chips to a thick, soft foam. Fosbury alone realized that the new mats enabled him to jump backwards, leveraging the superior physics of arching his back and curling his legs to clear the bar in one smooth, aerodynamic motion – not one leg at a time, as forward-jumpers did.
By his own admission, Fosbury wasn’t the best high jumper in the world in 1968. But thinking differently gave him the edge he needed to set a world record and reinvent the sport.
Learning to think differently
So, can you learn to notice what everyone else misses? To recognize the outdated assumptions and thought patterns that hold you back? Can you learn to think differently?
Indeed, you can, says David O’Connor, director of Learning and Innovation at Common Purpose, which creates learning experiences for people who want to change the world.
“Thinking creatively,” he says, “is not a trait reserved for a select few; it is a skill that can be cultivated and honed through deliberate practice and mindshifts.”
O’Connor and other proponents of thinking differently offer dozens of tips for how to do it; a sampling of those tips includes:
- Challenge assumptions and conventional wisdom. “The brain has a natural tendency to rely on cognitive shortcuts and biases when processing information, which can inhibit creative thinking and problem solving,” O’Connor says. Actively seek out “counterarguments, considering alternative perspectives and reframing problems in new ways. This process engages higher-order cognitive functions [ . . .] which are essential for overcoming mental barriers and fostering innovation.” (Check the link for more of O’Connor’s tips.)
- SIFT: Space, Insight, Focus and Twist is a pneumonic for remembering Bharvaga and duPont’s four categories of non-obvious thinking techniques. The Fosbury flop, for example, is a literal example of Twist – Fosbury reversed the way jumpers approach the high bar. Space involves creating room for new ideas, from slowing down to conscious breathing. Insight goes beyond describing what is to explaining why it is that way, usually by asking better, more probing questions. Focus involves techniques to recognize patterns and set constraints to cut through clutter and clarify thinking.
- Be curious. This tip is from Gerald Zaltman, an emeritus professor at Harvard Business School, who has a book scheduled for publication in February 2026 by Stanford University Press titled Dare to Think Differently: How Open-Mindedness Creates Exceptional Decision-Making. “The foe of curiosity is the avoidance of disconfirming evidence,” Zaltman said in a tip-filled interview with Knowledge at Wharton. “We’re afraid to find out things that contradict us. [ . . .] There’s something called ‘knowledge creep,’ where the more you wrestle with a decision, the more information that conflicts with the emerging action tends to get ignored. And that, I think, displays a lack of curiosity.”
- Expand your circle of contacts, advises TalentSmart EQ. “There’s no easier way to learn to think differently than spending time with someone whose strengths are your weaknesses or whose ideas are radically different from your own.”
- Don’t be afraid of new ideas. This tip, from the UK’s National Health Service’s Thinking Differently Book, proves that even massive bureaucracies can learn to think divergently. The downloadable, 215-page primer draws from hundreds of sources, including this this gem from renowned motivational coach Tony Robbins: “Don’t be afraid of new ideas. Be afraid of old ideas. They keep you where you are and stop you from growing and moving forward. Concentrate on where you want to go, not on what you fear.”
Non-obvious thinking at work
As these sources make clear, examples of non-obvious thinking are everywhere – if you know how to spot it. To make that easier, let’s explore a few cases of non-obvious, different, divergent and creative thinking from a wide variety of different pursuits:
Rethink the box
One of Bhargava’s favorite “think differently” examples is VanMoof Electric Bike Company (time stamp 45:40), which designed light, foldable electric bikes perfect for office workers and apartment dwellers to safely store in their tight workspaces and homes. Its direct-to-consumer, mail-order model also made buying the bikes easy. But bike after bike was returned broken due to abuse during shipping.
VanMoof tried re-designing the packaging to better protect its bikes, but they all used too much material, which violated the company’s sustainability goals, or added weight, which drove up shipping costs. Then the team had a different thought: what if, instead of showing a bike on the packaging, they showed a TV that displayed the bike on its screen?
The ruse worked. Thinking that they were handling a delicate TV, delivery people treated the box more gently and returns due to damage dropped by 80%.
VanMoof no longer manufactures foldable e-bikes, but its employees’ ability to think differently helped lead to the company’s rebirth with an acquisition by famed Formula 1 company McLaren Applied, which is developing a global network of dealers to distribute VanMoof electric bikes.
Rethink the material
Speaking of bikes, must all bike frames be manufactured from steel, aluminum, titanium or carbon? Come to think of it, what about automobiles? And do high-rise buildings need to be constructed of steel and concrete?
The founders of Strong by Form, a startup accelerated by the 3DEXPERIENCE Lab, challenge this traditional thinking by rethinking wood. Instead of cutting wood and nailing it together, CEO Andrew Mitnik and his teammates thought differently, creating a novel bio-composite material called Woodflow that substitutes wood fibers for the plastic ones usually found in composites.
“The future of wood is a future where we can build twice the timber structures we build today using half the number of trees,” Mitnik said. “This allows us to make construction more sustainable and productive while also opening new possibilities for wood in industries that have never used it before.”
Composites bind two different types of material together to achieve advantages that neither material can deliver alone. For example, most modern airplanes are made almost entirely of advanced plastic composites, which layer sheets of glass fiber with a resin or thermoplastic binder. Staggering the direction of the fibers in the various layers creates tremendous strength at low weights.
Plastics are made from petroleum, a non-renewable resource. But wood is renewable and its fibers also can be aligned and stacked in layers, just like plastic fibers. This makes wood composites strong, formable and beautiful.
MODSIM, a software-enabled mathematical discipline, allows Strong by Form to model and simulate how Woodflow will perform under real-world conditions and then iterate the design, adjusting the layers to achieve specific goals. It also guides the company in controlling manufacturing processes to achieve its strength, weight, cost and sustainability goals.
Mitnik enjoys showing off prototype products that range from a bicycle frame produced without carbon-intensive welds, to highly polished wood-grain interior components for automobiles to the curved shell of a bus shelter.
“[Woodflow] is bio-based but highly automated, designed to be produced at scale from Day One, which is a big difference from traditional composites,” Mitnik said. “Also, it’s 90% wood and only 10% resin, making it very sustainable. And it all starts with the [design] software.”
Rethink the design
Everyone knows what a chair looks like, right? But what if you didn’t? What would you design?
Anne Asensio, vice president of Design Experience at Dassault Systèmes, and Patrick Jouin, founder of design firm Patrick Jouin iD, used AI-enabled generative design software to see what a computer would do with the challenge.
Rather than telling the computer what the chair should look like, Jouin and Asensio gave the software a set of constraints to work within: a structure that could support an average-weight person at a comfortable height, use minimal material, and be 3D-printed in one piece in a standard-size printer, then unfolded for use.
The result is TA.TAMU, a 3-kilo (6.6-pound), one-piece chair that looks like a lacy spider web, can be lifted with two fingers, and folds flat for storage or shipping. It employs nature-inspired biomimicry knowledge programmed into the design software to achieve maximum strength with minimal material.
“It’s almost like asking Nature: ‘Please, can you grow a chair with your philosophy of using as (little) material as possible?’” Jouin said.
“To improve the world we live in we’re going to have to change the way we produce, the way we design and the way we use materials,” Asensio said. “3D printing can’t yet use a truly recyclable material, but we’ve shown that until that day comes, we can minimize the material we do use.”
Rethink complex formulas
For decades, pharmaceutical researchers have used pure brainpower – their detailed knowledge of chemicals and biologics and how they combine to fight disease – to identify new combinations worthy of study.
But what about untried combinations? Could human experience, which has discovered hundreds of life-saving medicines, actually limit the potential to discover new treatments? Armed with their knowledge but not their biases, could AI-enabled computer programs make discoveries beyond experience?
Swiss biotherapeutics company CDR-Life thought they could. So CDR-Life teamed up with contract researchers at Dassault Systèmes BIOVIA brand, which uses powerful, AI-enabled computer modeling to quickly propose and evaluate chemistries and biologics. Together, they worked to discover and virtually test next-generation, highly tumor-selective cancer immunotherapies from CDR-Life’s M-gager® platform for experimental data.
Using its software, the BOVIA modeled different molecules virtually, in the computer, then quickly scanned them to identify those with the most promising properties. CDR-Life is now testing variants found to have a high probability of success in its labs. “By working together, we can use the insights gathered virtually for our protein engineering platform and pave the way toward more efficient and effective oncology treatments,” said Fabian Scheifele, Discovery Leader, CDR-Life.
Rethink experiences
What if you could experience impacts on the real world in a virtual one? If, using scientifically accurate representations of real objects, you could unlearn bad habits and split from an unsustainable status quo? What if you could break things without having to actually build them?
Dassault Systèmes’ 3D UNIV+RSES, a new class of representation of the world introduced earlier this year, are a groundbreaking leap in how we design and innovate. They blend modeling, simulation, data science and AI-generated content into a singular, dynamic ecosystem.
By creating a secure virtual environment, businesses can experiment, test, and iterate like never before, simulating real-world behaviors in the risk-free setting of the virtual world. From simulating safety tests for automobiles to rehearsing complex medical procedures to stress-testing infrastructure in a thriving city-state, this approach doesn’t just improve efficiency but fosters creative problem-solving and sustainable innovation.
Whether it’s connecting virtual twins across industries or enabling real-time collaboration, 3D UNIV+RSES are shaping a new frontier where knowledge and know-how merge to tackle challenges, transform industrial models, and redefine what’s possible for those who dare to think differently.
A salute to those who think differently
Whether using their own brains in new ways or turbocharging their thoughts with the help of computer-enabled modeling and AI, researchers, inventors and dreamers from every walk of life are cooking up world-changing ideas by thinking differently.
Novelist Arthur Conan Doyle was undoubtedly correct when he put these words into the mouth of his fictional sleuth Sherlock Holmes: “The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.” But those who master the art of non-obvious thinking are solving modern and age-old challenges by applying the famous sleuth’s powers of logic and deduction in ways that bring both the obvious and the well-hidden into the light of day.