A review of the book titled " Winning the Brain Game; Fixing the 7 Fatal Flaws of Thinking” by Matthew May, which explores key ways to approach innovation.

1. How to Rectify Flaws
in the Creative
Process

2. While creative thinking and problem solving are both key concepts
that are interconnected with the notion of business,
entrepreneurship, there comes a time when these strongly ingrained
ideas can hinder any sort of innovative process moving forward in
your brand.
The inspirational book titled ‘Winning the Brain Game; Fixing the 7
Fatal Flaws of Thinking,” by Matthew May provides readers useful
insight to tackle managing and developing your creative side once
challenges in your business seem out of your reach.

3. Known as a very prolific author, May has crafted a myriad of
books that include “The Elegant Solution”, “In Pursuit of
Elegance”, “The Shibumi Strategy” and “The Law of
Subtraction” that all collectively examine different strategies
from design thinking to lean thinking.
In terms of “Winning the Brain Game,” May gives advice to his
readers so they can utilize their minds in ways to more
effectively produce complex solutions to issues or problems
that you previously felt were impossible to successfully
approach.

4. Although May discusses business related issues when it comes to
approaching a new business plan, he also takes a step back to access
how the various flaws of our educational system. He finds the root of
our incapability to brainstorm from the ingrained mentality from
school which reaffirms to not question or create new ways to approach
a problem, but rather find the correct answer through a standardized
exam.

5. In turn, May notes the fact that this does not only obstruct the
problem solving process from an early age, but also conditions us to
think very narrow-mindedly in a stage of our lives when innovation
should be maximized in every way possible. Throughout the book, the
author makes it clear that to advance the creative side of your brain,
the first step is to come up with various questions as a means to
address the problem instead of forming solutions.

6. The logic is that these questions have the potential to initiate new ideas or
ways to approach the problem instead of immediately conjuring up
solutions with a limited originality.
As doubt is one of the many fundamental hindrances that negatively affect
the creative process, May makes it known that censoring this is essential
not only for your sanity, but also in terms of bettering yourself in your
respective field. He then claims that in order to muster up the courage or
bravery to improve creatively, we need to return to a mental state similar
to how children act upon their curiosity or desire to experiment without
concern of the outcome.

7. Also, he finds that this “ideacide” is rooted from fear, which allows
us to engage in self-censoring to a point when we become
completely incapable of producing anything that challenges
normalcy or the situation’s conformed state. Thus, May argues
that among all of the fatal flaws, self-doubt is by far the most
dangerous idea threatening any form of innovation.

8. To better respond to the self-doubt fatal-thinking flaw, the author
makes an interesting point to undertake new scenarios or situations
with a mindful framework as a means to better approach the matter
at hand with active thinking, instead of indifference or perhaps
rejection. The act of questioning or taking other perspectives into
account is highly important when it comes to any sort of professional,
personal or academic growth as you move forward in your path.