The one sentence summary

Smart hunches come from being curious, seeing other points of view, and applying experience to solve problems.

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS 

  • Most people can turn everyday insights into the next big thing. It’s all about making intuitive connections that other people overlook.
  • You know more than you think – start with what you know.
  • Our insights are only as good as our questions – ask a lot of them.
  • The Myth of the Innovation Epiphany – actually, it’s usually a slow hunch.
  • Ideas are overrated – simply having them isn’t enough. They need to be improved and evaluated.
  • It takes practice – you have to keep working at it.
  • What we see is not all there is – there is always more to it.
  • Groundbreaking ideas don’t start with ideas – they start with a problem.
  • The birth of a hunch involves:

1.    Embracing curiosity (interest + attention)

2.   Tapping into empathy (worldview + understanding)

3.   Firing the imagination (context + experience)

  • There are three types of curiosity:

Diversive: a hunger for novelty.

Empathetic: the drive to understand another person and see their view.

Epistemic: a deeper quest for understanding that prompts exploration.

  • You can evaluate and improve ideas in 6 steps:
  1. Focus: prioritise undistracted thinking time
  2. Notice: Practice paying attention to behaviours, patterns and anomalies.
  3. Question: Get into the habit of questioning.
  4. Discern: Determine which ideas might be worth pursuing first.
  5. Predict: Translate insight into foresight.
  6. Try and test: Get feedback by testing.

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

  • Genius isn’t just about having a huge intellect; it also requires an open heart.
  • Distraction is the enemy of insight.
  • Ideas = solutions in search of problems
  • Opportunities = problems begging for a solution.
  • Insight (patterns & practice) + Foresight (potential & predictions) = Hunch
  • In short:
  1. Learn to see problems and discern which are worth solving.
  2. Understand how it feels to be the person with the problem.
  3. Build on what is already understood in order to connect ideas and describe new possibilities for the future.

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

  • Nothing. It’s short and to the point.