Wharton Fellows
Thinking Outside the Bento Box

After a presentation in a Shanghai conference room by the CEO of a Chinese mega-retailer, Wharton Professor Jerry Wind asked him about the broader Chinese market. He commented that, as a Shanghai company, they understood Shanghai, but not the rest of China. "China is not homogeneous. It is changing and dramatically complex," Wind later told participants of the Wharton Fellows executive education program. "Even a business in Shanghai doesn't understand the Chinese market. We need to rethink the business model for this market. It would be a tragic mistake to think you can take an American product and dump it here. The market requires an approach from a fresh point of view. "

The Power of Impossible Thinking

Achieving a fresh point of view by transforming mental models has been a central theme of the Fellows program since its origin more than 4 years ago. In discussing organizational transformations with senior executives in the program, faculty realized that the biggest challenge is often the personal transformation of thinking. Professor and Fellows founder Jerry Wind and faculty member Colin Crook, former chief technology officer of Citibank, began discussing the significance of mental models in limiting or opening opportunities.

Drawing upon current neuroscience research, they pointed to studies that dramatically illustrate the mind's ability to limit its sight based on its current mental model. For example, one study asked subjects to count the number of times white-shirted basketball players passed a ball in a video. The subjects were so intent on this task that they failed to see a gorilla walking right through the center of the play. If our minds have the ability to ignore an entire gorilla, what other threats and prospects are we missing in our environment?

The insights from Wind and Crook's Fellows sessions became the basis for a new book, The Power of Impossible Thinking: Transform the Business of Your Life and the Life of Your Business, which is one of the first titles released by Wharton School Publishing this summer. The book presents one of the first systematic processes for understanding, examining, and changing mental models. It addresses questions such as: How do you know when to change your mental models or stick with your tried-and-true models? What do you do with the old models? How do you make sense in complex, data-rich environments? Once you decided to change your own model, how do you bring others along? How do you harness your intuition to access your models in real time?

"Working on transformation initiatives with leaders of major global corporations, we have recognized a simple lesson with profound implications: To change your world, you first have to change your own thinking," Wind and Crook write. "Neuroscience research shows that your mind discards the majority of the sensory stimuli you receive. What you see is what you think. The ability to see the world differently can create significant opportunities, as companies such as Southwest Airlines, FedEx, Charles Schwab, and others have demonstrated. From driving organizational growth to improving personal health and fitness to fighting international terrorism, your mental models shape your responses in every area of your life."

Doing the Impossible

Changing thinking is at the core of the Wharton Fellows program. Participants meet with senior executives at companies in different industries and different parts of the world for "live case studies" of their current challenges. Recent case studies have looked at growth through the eyes of top executives of Starbucks, Microsoft, and Costco in Seattle and at the media industry through the eyes of Fox executives in Los Angeles. Programs have considered the entrepreneurial success of Harley-Davidson Japan and the alliance strategy of Shanghai electronics firm SVA. Fellows participants have heard perspectives from youth in Finland on the cell phone culture in Helsinki or considered Toyota's strategy over traditional Japanese Bento boxes in Tokyo. Fellows participants are encouraged to apply these fresh perspectives to the challenges in their own businesses.

The program is deliberately designed to take participants out of the comfort zone of simple frameworks to grapple with the real, complicated challenges of business. Whether it is exploring different industries — from retailing to online auctions to media to motorcycles — or a different geographic region, the program is designed to stretch the thinking of Fellows participants. This requires not only gaining new knowledge but challenging one's whole way of thinking.

The Fellows program has put into practice some of the principles of impossible thinking discussed in the book. The program has no fixed curriculum nor set classroom. The primary "instructors" are business leaders from a diverse mix of companies around the world, but these change from program to program. Faculty are not talking heads in front of the classroom but rather facilitators of the learning that occurs across this decision support network involving faculty, Fellows, and outside experts. Unlike most programs that have a defined duration, members are inducted into the Fellows, but it is a lifelong learning network.

Like any experiment, the design of the Fellows program has evolved several times since its origin. With more than 150 Fellows, its direction is now driven by the insights and demands of the network itself. Upcoming programs will look at transformations in Europe during a program in Prague in September and mergers and acquisitions in New York City in December. Proposed Master Classes for 2005 include a session in India on opportunities and outsourcing, sessions in Milan and Copenhagen on the process of design, a program on reinventing government to be held in Washington, DC, and an examination of Latin America in Miami.

"For Fellows, the classroom is the world," Wind said. "Instead of offering simple frameworks and solutions, we challenge our own mental models and develop new perspectives. As the needs of the world change so dramatically, we need to look beyond the bounds of a traditional program to meet them."

   

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