Charlie Munger Image via Wikipedia
Yesterday on HackerNews a question was posted: How do geniuses think? Always on the lookout for a better understanding of great thinkers, I clicked through to read the responses. The problem solving techniques of great thinkers have application in better understanding innovation, perhaps the essence of entrepreneurship. I have been studying the techniques of great thinkers since this post in 2007 on James Austin.
Digging through the responses to the question, I found a paper referenced by noverloop. The paper focuses on Charlie Munger, legendary investor and partner of Warren Buffett, and originally appeared in FocusInvestor.com The link to the paper is here. The article is a comprehensive discussion about how to think about business and the required problem solving.
Conclusions from the article are:
- Solve the big problems first
- Support reasoning with mathematics, statistics and related disciplines
- Think backwards when addressing problems (read the article)
- Multi-discipline approaches frequently produce the best results
The article also has some great insights into risk analysis, comparative advantage and decision trees.
