18th Century Technology; 21st Century Problems

LegalTED, coming soon to a conflict near you.

In the meantime, I’m off to one of my two favorite cities in the entire world:  Manhattan.  In the meantime, I leave you in the capable hands of Albert Einstein.

Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.

Concern for man and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.

Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler. God may be subtle, but he isn’t plain mean.

I’ve no special talent. I am only passionately curious.

And here, from BNet, How to Solve a Problem:

1. Pretend you know what to do; maybe you do.

2. Think of impractical ideas; they lead you to practical ones.

3. Come up with illogical ideas; they may lead you to logical ones.

4. Come up with wrong answers; they may lead you to right ones. In fact, come up with the stupid, foolish, and absurd answers. They may lead to the smart, feasible ones.

5. Turn the situation into a metaphor: What if it were a sports game? An elevator? A
cowboy movie? A vacation?

6. Break the rules; as Von Oech says, “You can’t solve today’s problems with yesterday’s solutions. “

7. Play “what if. ” Pretend you’re a wizard. What if things could be any way you can
imagine?

S. When you find the right answer, look for another one. It may be better than the first.

9. Consider how someone in another profession or field would approach this situation.  What would an architect do? An actress? A farmer?

10. Ask the question differently. What if the problem isn’t what you think it is?

                       

Victoria Pynchon

Attorney-mediator Victoria Pynchon is a panelist with ADR Services, Inc. Ms. Pynchon was awarded her LL.M Degree in Dispute Resolution from the Straus Institute in May of 2006, after 25 years of complex commercial litigation practice, with sub-specialties in intellectual property, securities fraud, antitrust, insurance coverage, consumer class actions and all… MORE >