UNCONSCIOUS INNOVATION

By working with Unconscious Innovation you get to explore simple and highly practical techniques to leverage the power of your brain in new ways.

As the focus is at the metacognition level (the underlying processes and principles behind perception, thoughts and action selection), the benefits are extremely wide-ranging and inherently transferable. As it is always the same brain we use, this means that the the tools and techniques can be applied to pretty much anything, whether it be creativity, design, scientific research, futures scanning, communication, organisational change, leadership or stress reduction. And everything in between.

You bring the subject expertise and area on which you want to focus. We bring the tools and techniques you can apply to think differently and innovate. We’ve all got brains. Let’s explore how we can use them in new ways to create the future we want.

With 86 billion neurons, each connected to thousands of others, the human brain is truly breathtaking in its complexity, architecture and beauty. It produces all our thoughts, memories, feelings, perception, etc. The brain literally provides you with the experience of what it is like to be you. To be us.

It is the wellspring of the most exquisite achievements in art, science and culture, as well as the source of war, destruction and cruelty. Both individually and collectively, it is the key to understanding our past and designing our future. And yet, remarkably, a focus on the brain is often left out of innovation practices and processes, even though it is the way in which we perceive and process the New and Different, as opposed to the Old and the Same.

The astonishing advances made in the neurosciences and various neuroimaging techniques in recent decades have allowed us to ‘take a look inside’ to begin to understand how the brain actually works in practice, rather than just infer from observed behaviour. What emerges is not at all a kind of cognitive camera which meticulously perceives the world ‘as it is’. Rather, it is an embodied brain, whose evolutionary ‘purpose’ and corresponding deep biological architecture, is the maintenance, preservation and propagation of the living organism. You. Me. Us.

Understanding how and why the brain functions the way it does enables us to ‘hack into’ and leverage its natural processes to help us perceive ourselves and the world through new eyes. To innovate. In doing so, we open up a new world of possibilities, as our perception options – and the resulting actions – are much more fluid and malleable than we normally realise.

We call them Perception and Cognition Tools (PACTs), because they are all about providing us with more flexibility and choices as to how we view and understand the world around us. That is, to step beyond our normal way of thinking and expertise and leverage additional cognitive resources to give us more agility and flexibility. Whether you call them PACTs or ‘brain-hacks’, the tools and techniques are (generally) simple, ‘anytime/ anyplace’ and suitable for everyone. They are also fun and surprising!

Central to the Unconscious Innovation approach is the recognition that the brain operates in different modes (expansive/ focussed, sleep/ awake, relaxed/ alert, logical/ imaginative, etc., etc.). By being more aware of the different operating states, we can then use very simple techniques to deliberately switch between them. It is not that one state is ‘better’ than another – we need all of them. Rather, it is about ensuring we are in the most appropriate state for the task at hand; having more of a Swiss Army knife in our cognitive tool kit, rather than just a familiar hammer to which every task looks like a nail.

Because we use the same brain in whatever we are doing, the tools and techniques are entirely transferable to a whole range of situations. This can be from undertaking research in the life sciences to leadership development, from creative design to improving business practices and from developing a human rights campaign to reducing stress and anxiety. And pretty much anything else. It is about combining your subject expertise with our tools.

As well as introducing the tools and techniques, a large emphasis is also placed on ‘why’ they work. Thus, workshops are most certainly a mixture of both theory and practice, as it is important for the integrity of the approach to develop an appreciation of the underlying processes which are occurring.

We have dozens of tools and techniques, but below is just a very, very small-sample to provide an idea what we are talking about.

If you would like to discuss how we might work together to give your innovation process a very practical boost, then please get in contact. Either send an email to info@unconscious-innovation.com or contact us through the form below.