Thinking Wrong about Climate Change
I heard about “Thinking Wrong” when I was in college in the mid-2000’s. It wasn’t until June 2009 that I experienced it first hand. That’s when I was accepted into Project M, a program for creative people looking for a platform to collaborate and generate ideas and projects for the greater good.
John Bielenberg, who founded Project M back in 2003, led my M session in Greensboro, AL for four hot and humid weeks. John and other M Advisors taught us the Think Wrong process as well as pushing us to create projects for the greater good. Not only did I dive deep into this fun process, M solidified my desire to apply my design skills towards creating positive change in the world.
On Thinking Wrong…
“In the creative process, designers are victims of their own synaptic connections; subconsciously we’re following predictable pathways to solve problems [whereas] what you would want at the beginning of a design challenge is as many possibilities as you could imagine. ‘Thinking Wrong’ is really about breaking those biases and synaptic pathways to generate a lot of potential solutions before you select and execute one.” — John Bielenberg
How can a bike ride sequester carbon and solve climate change?
Since that summer, I’ve worked with John on a number of projects, becoming colleagues and good friends. In 2011, we launched The Alabamboo Make & Ride, a cross-country tour on bamboo bikes to advance the growth of Alabama’s bamboo industry.
The whole idea behind the cross-country bike tour was a half-joke while on a bike ride with John and another friend. I mentioned that I wanted to ride across the country before I turned 30. We joked around, thinking I should do it on my NADA fixed bike. We all laughed and continued with the joke, “Yes, and…”-ing each other.
By the end of the ride, we “thought wrong” about building bikes out of bamboo to help promote a new organization (one John just got connected with) called Alabamboo. Alabamboo was a great organization whose goal was to make bamboo a new cash crop in Alabama and to create sustainable bamboo farms which would produce the largest domestically available resources and products such as bikes, fabric, building materials, and paper.
Also, bamboo is also one of the most efficient carbon-sequestering plants in the world. Hell yeah!
After 2 months on the bike and 3,000+ miles on the road, we finished the ride from Greensboro, AL to San Francisco, CA in July 2011. What a ride!
Since then, I’ve worked closely with John and others, developing and implementing exercises and approaches towards Thinking Wrong while working at Project M and Future. I’ve incorporated this process into my work ever since, specifically for The Determined.
Thinking Wrong is great because…
+ It helps people produce a lot of ideas before locking down
In the creative process, people tend to think their first idea is the best idea. Perhaps they nail down an idea right off the bat, thinking it’s the only one worth exploring. They hold onto it, not letting it go even if it’s proving to not be a great idea.
We helped the guys over at Impossible Labs come up with a name for Airminers.org, an index of companies and projects mining carbon from the air. We ran the gamut of names, having fun coming up with something that felt right; stupid names, basic names, and everything in between. We landed on Airminers with the intention that, besides being the name of their company, it could be used as a noun (Airminers) and verb (airmining), to help drive home the mission even more.
+ It has the ability to amplify work that challenges the status-quo
Business as usual got us into this crazy mess that we’re now dealing with in regards to climate change. We need new approaches that will help us break from what’s not working to create new, better systems, products, and services that address these gnarly issues. Thinking Wrong helps people do that.
It’s been great working with a number of organizations tackling climate change. We’ve helped our good friends over at Manylabs incorporate some of this process in the way they think of their business model.
Speaking of, Manylabs invited us to run an hour-long workshop on branding climate change. We know the climate space is ripe for Thinking Wrong. When it comes to messaging, people are tired of the typical “Go Green” campaigns, which often falls on deaf ears. We need new ways to get people interested, engaged, and active in pressuring companies and leaders to address our fossil fuel consumption so that we can shift towards more renewable energy sources.
+ It invites serendipity into the mix
Thinking Wrong is great when you need to get unstuck. One of the many exercise we use is called, “Two Word Mash Up”. We compile a set of Post-It’s with random words or phrases taken from something said/shared during a meeting or workshop. We then randomly pick two Post-Its, using the words on them as inspiration towards addressing the current challenge or project goal. Lots of weird, stupid, and fun ideas are generated. From there, it’s pretty much guaranteed that we’ll find something in the mix that we can grab a hold of and use as inspiration to move forward.
During that lunch time bike ride back in 2010, we riffed off of one another, mashing up random, disparate ideas, to finally land on the idea of riding bikes made of bamboo across the country. Would we have gotten all the attention towards the project and bike ride if we did the tour on regular steel bikes? Probably not.
Just hit play
When creating The Determined, Sarah and I both knew the value this process had when generating ideas. Paired with her Prototype Thinking background, which is great for prototyping and testing out ideas, it’s a one-two punch approach in the creative process. Bringing both Thinking Wrong and Prototype Thinking into the studio has helped us create the foundation of our Remix creative process.
Tackling climate change is no small feat
It’s going to take bold action at all levels, in all industries, and from all angles. Breakthroughs and new technologies that we can’t even imagine right now are in front us — we just need to be thinking wrong about how we discover them and with implementing these ideas.
We need to go big, be bold, and fearless if we want to ensure that we hit our goals of meeting our 1.5°C target.
Are you a climate entrepreneur in need of coming up with innovative ways to address climate change? Thinking Wrong might be your best weapon to do this. Learn more about what we do.
One last thing
You’re invited to our new event series, Thinking Wrong about Climate Change. We’re bringing people together to meet up, build communities, and generate ideas towards tackling climate change. It’ll be an ongoing series of meet ups in the SF Bay Area that will cover a variety of industries such as landscape regeneration, ocean health, and clean energy.
P.S. We are obsessed with helping entrepreneurs like you kick ass. Download our zine on how to stand out and be heard.
If you’re one of these people, we salute you. We need to band together and help one another. Please sign up below so we can send you our mixtapes and stay in touch.
The Determined is a creative studio jamming with companies building a climate-resilient world.
We help companies with their messaging, branding, and strategy so that their solutions can get support from as many people as possible. Check us out at thedetermined.co.
