2.2 Entrepreneurial leadership for technology: an opposable mind  (Page 7/11)

Martin further reasons:

"Similarly, we are born with an opposable mind we can use to hold two conflicting ideas in constructive tension. We can use that tension to think our way through to a new and superior idea. Were we able to hold only one thought or idea in our heads at a time, we wouldn’t have access to the insights that the opposable mind can produce. And just as we can develop and refine the skill with which we employ our opposable thumbs to perform tasks that once seemed impossible, I’m convinced we can also, with patient practice, develop the ability to use our opposable minds to unlock solutions to problems that seem to resist every effort to solve them. Using our opposable minds to past unappetizing alternatives, we can find solutions that once appeared beyond the reach of our imaginations. (p. 7)

Before investigating a conceptual framework for entrepreneurial leadership for technology in education, it may be helpful to look at Martin’s working definition of integrative thinking, followed by some specific examples of integrative thinkers who have demonstrated entrepreneurial leadership for technology:

The ability to face constructively the tension of opposing ideas and, instead of choosing one at the expense of the other, generate a creative resolution of the tension in the form of a new idea that contains elements of the opposing ideas but is superior to each.

In leading technology for our schools, we are often faced with problems that appear to have two especially unsatisfactory solutions. If there is a relationship between Martin’s integrative thinking and entrepreneurial leadership for technology, and I suggest there is, then we might investigate how technology leaders actually think about problems and solutions. How do technology leaders determine the many options before them in a way that leads to an intelligent and practical solution? What is it that causes them to perhaps consider both solutions A and B, but then select a new option C, which might have components of A and B, but is much more innovative and stretches from the status quo of A and B?

To get at some answers to the questions posed, we need to look at Martin’s framework for the process of thinking and deciding. Figure 3 combines what we already know about leadership (i.e., Figure 1 and 2) with Martin’s process and steps in decision making: salience, causality, architecture, and resolution.

Martin captures the flow of the process:

Whatever we decide, we’ll arrive at our choice by considering a set of features we deem salient; creating a mental model of the causal relationships among those features; arranging those causal relationships into an architecture intended to produce a specific outcome; thereby reaching a resolution of the problem at hand. With different salience, causality, and architecture, we would almost certainly arrive at a different outcome. (p. 29)

Using what we know about leadership and now Martin’s work with integrative thinking, let’s look at a couple of education leaders and follow their process of thinking and decision making.