Neuroplasticity For Everyday Use

Expanding the Art Of The Possible

Our brains continuously rewire themselves and make new connections as they perceive, process and integrate new information and experiences. This neuroplasticity – otherwise known as learning – is literal and physical and is at the heart of our ability to change our way of thinking and acting.

Left to their own devices, for many of us our brains tend to work on autopilot, pursuing paths of least resistance, reinforcing existing patterns and minimising energy use.

Our tools and techniques aim to “hack into” our brains’ functioning, exposing them to different perspectives and opening up unexpected networks and connections. The aim is not to create new abstract ‘knowledge’, but to help you understand and leverage the deep underlying architecture that shapes your perception and action.

Cutting-edge Theory and Powerful Practice

Leveraging Our Natural Intelligence

A core aspect of our approach is that our perceptions, actions, choices, imagination and beliefs can be understood from a natural, biological, evolutionary perspective. That is, no need for gadgets, substances, super-natural powers or magical thinking; just a trust in the astonishing power of the greatest innovator of all – nature.

Most of our innovation tools and techniques can be adapted and recombined to whatever the topic, because we use the same brain whatever we are doing. That is, even if the contexts and subject matter are entirely different, the underlying brain processes are the same.

This flexibility means that skills and knowledge are entirely transferable across domains and subjects, whether you are developing a strategic plan, seeking to increase creativity in scientists or to improve the well-being of staff.

All of our work includes both the theoretical background and practice, as neither make sense without the other. All workshops are tailor-made, meaning that the balance between theory and practice depends upon your needs and the time available.

Practice

Our wide variety of tools and techniques are all cognitive and brain-based exercises to expand the way you perceive, think and imagine (none of them include coming up with as many unique uses of an envelope and a brick as possible!).

Our tools and techniques are not only simple and powerful, but also often highly surprising to people, as they realise that entirely different ways of thinking are not always as complicated as they might seem.

We do not expect all of our tools and techniques to work for every person at every time, as we strongly reject a one size fits all approach – we all come from different perspectives, have different experiences, are in different circumstances and at different stages in our lives. The important point is that people identify and use the aspects which resonate with them.

We have dozens of tools and techniques. Here is just a very small sample:

Searching For The New And Different: Helping the brain look for what it doesn’t know, rather than recycling what it does.

Framing Your Brain’s Questions: Just as the question you ask an internet search engine determines the answers you get, so asking the right questions of your brain will shape the solutions it identifies.

Resistance to Premature Cognitive Closure: Helping the brain stay in the space of adjacent possibilities for new solutions.

Giving Yourself Permission: Expanding Agency by understanding and going beyond self- and societal- imposed constraints and inhibitions.

Changing Perspectives: Leveraging physical change of perspectives to enable your brain to see things differently.

Inverse and Forward Planning: Using the brain’s natural predictive functioning to identify forward and backward planning paths.

Visual Focus For Cognitive Shift: Techniques to switch between broader perspective taking and narrow-task oriented focus.

Your 24/7 Advisors: Using imagination to reorganise your existing knowledge and gain new insights for action.

From Either/ Or to Both… And…: Helping the brain enlarge the range of possibilities by engaging with uncertainty and ambiguity.

Your Mother Was Right – Sleep On It: Exploring the possibilities of sleep, dreams and the space in-between to loosen your brain’s constraints and gain new insights.

Experience has shown the most effective way of using the tools and techniques is by combining workshop participation with individual or team coaching.

The Theory

Our approach is underpinned by the work of the ground-breaking and most cited ever neuroscientist, Karl Friston.

Far from experiencing the world “as is”, our perception is seen as a ‘top-down/inside-out’ process where we essentially experience our internal models of the world. Here, our brain’s fundamental operating principle is to close the gap (reduce uncertainty) between its existing model of the world and the world itself.

If this sounds overly theoretical or abstract, it really shouldn’t. As explored in our workshops, this has very profound, practical and immediate implications as to how we understand the world around us, whether in our personal or professional lives or as members of communities and societies. 

It is absolutely not necessary to have any previous understanding of these issues before working with us, as our workshops are tailor-made to the audience.

For a highly-simplified overview of Predictive Processing (derived from Karl Friston’s work) see I Predict Therefore I Am: How Your Brain Makes Sense Of The World | LinkedIn.

For a more in-depth but accessible overview of the Predictive Brain see, for example, The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict And Shape Reality, Andy Clark.

For comprehensive treatment, see a more in-depth, formal and technical overview, see Active Inference: The Free Energy Principle in Mind, Brain and Behavior by Thomas Parr, Giovanni Pezzulo and Karl Friston. For challenges and open questions see The Philosophy and Science Of Predictive Processing.

AAA+ Innovation Mindset

For a more formal approach to innovation and cognitive flexibility, we use the AAA+ Framework. The framework was developed by us to provide an entry point – or a lens – for the analysis of challenges and issues. The framework is a systems approach to behaviour, problem and opportunity analysis which is entirely scalable. That is, the framework is applicable from the levels of personal decision making through to teams, organisations and societies.

The AAA+ framework is entirely grounded because it derives from, and is organised around, basic life-processes that occur at all levels in the natural world, i.e., Agents (who), Aspire (have goals) and Adapt (how) to their environment. All of these are modulated by the internal state.

The AAA+ framework also brings a simplicity, intuitiveness and useability which is often lacking in more complex and abstract mindset and behaviour models.

Note: The extent to which the AAA+ framework is directly used in a particular workshop depends on the specific issue being explored.

To explore for the AAA+ Framework further, try our free online version.