What is generational thinking?

Answer 1

To me, "generative thinking" labels the process, or processes, that create, within the mind of the thinker, new ideas; it is the process of generating new ideas. Creating new (to the thinker) applications of "old" ideas would also be called generative thinking.

Generative thinking has parallels in the notion of biological natural selection: when one is in a generative mode, hardly ever does "just the right (best, perfect, etc) idea" come immediately to mind. Rather, we direct our effort at a challenge or problem at hand, writing questions and ideas nonstop, while delaying judgment on those ideas. When a particularly worthy idea is generated, the thinker recognizes its worth almost immediately. That idea, then, the "most adaptive" of these "intellectual mutations" is "selected" by the thinker for further refinement, or for further extension through generative thinking.

One of the most productive ways to engage in generative thinking is to begun by writing (pen, pencil, or keyboard) open-ended questions related to the subject or matter under consideration. Open-ended questions ask about possibilities, rather than for answers. Well-phrased questions do not ask for "the answer," nor for "the best answer." They ask about possibilities, options, considerations, and so on. This gives the thinker's mind permission to explore, to generate possibilities, including the "maladaptive" ones. Natural Selection theory suggests that nature does not predetermine which of its variations will be installed in a given species; it selects the most adaptive variations after their creation, along with other variations.

So it is with generative thinking as a process to arrive at worthy ideas.