Abstract
Derived from unifying dual-process theories of cognitive psychology, we propose a new concept of deliberate intuition as a construct of higher-level cognition that integrates intuitive and deliberate judgments. We introduce “Wuity” cognition embedded into Chinese philosophy, which is defined by the capability of deliberate intuition and intuitive insights, based on imagery reasoning and non-dualistic thinking and manifested as mindful observation and visual analogy. We develop a framework of five features of Wuity and six steps of Wuity-based innovation. As a case study illustrating our method, we analyze Elon Musk’s way to innovate and discuss common aspects of Wuity as a higher cognition and creative thinking way of innovators in East and West.
This paper is sponsored by China National Social Science Fund Project (16BTQ058).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Baer, R. A., Smith, G. T., & Allen, K. B. (2004). Assessment of mindfulness by self-report: The Kentucky inventory of mindfulness skills. Assessment, 11(3), 191–206.
Bentz, V. M., & Shapiro, J. J. (1998). Mindful inquiry in social research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Bingham, C. B., & Eisenhardt, K. M. (2011). Rational heuristics: the ‘simple rules’ that strategists learn from process experience. Strategic Management Journal, 32(13), 1437–1464.
Bird, B. (1988). Implementing entrepreneurial ideas: The case for intention. Academy of Management Review, 13(3), 442–453.
Borgo, D. (2007). Free jazz in the classroom: An ecological approach to music education. Jazz Perspectives, 1(1), 61–88.
Cantrell, J. (2015). Why did Elon Musk ask Jim Cantrell and Adeo Ressi, in particular, to travel to Russia with him in 2001? Retrieved June 10, 2017, from https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Elon-Musk-ask-Jim-Cantrell-and-Adeo-Ressi-in-particular-to-travel-to-Russia-with-him-in-2001
Casakin, H. (2004). Visual analogy as a cognitive strategy in the design process: Expert versus novice performance. Journal of Design Research, 4(2), 124–141.
Chaikin, A. (2012, January). Is SpaceX changing the rocket equation? Air and Space Magazine. Retrieved July 1, 2017, from http://www.airspacemag.com/space/is-spacex-changing-the-rocket-equation-132285884/
Dejong, G. (1989). The role of explanation in analogy; or, the curse of an alluring name. In Similarity and analogical reasoning (pp. 346–365). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Dekeyser, M., Raes, F., Leijssen, M., Leysen, S., & Dewulf, D. (2008). Mindfulness skills and interpersonal behaviour. Personality and Individual Differences, 44(5), 1235–1245.
Dimidjian, S., & Linehan, M. M. (2003). Defining an agenda for future research on the clinical application of mindfulness practice. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 10(2), 166–171.
Easto, J. (Ed.). (2017). Rocket man: Elon Musk in his own words. Evanston, IL: Agate Publishing.
Eisenhardt, K. M. (1989). Agency theory: An assessment and review. Academy of management review, 14(1), 57–74.
Eisenhardt, K. M., & Graebner, M. E. (2007). Theory building from cases: Opportunities and challenges. Academy of management journal, 50(1), 25–32.
Epstein, R. A. (1984). In defense of the contract at will. The University of Chicago Law Review, 51(4), 947–982.
Epstein, R. M. (2003). Mindful practice in action (I): Technical competence, evidence-based medicine, and relationship-centered care. Families, Systems, and Health, 21(1), 1–9.
Evans, J. S. B., & Stanovich, K. E. (2013). Dual-process theories of higher cognition: Advancing the debate. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8(3), 223–241.
Fengli, L. (2010). Metaphor, Qu-Xiang Bi-Lei and Chinese Medicine. The way of thinking: Theory, methodology and structure of Traditional Chinese Medicine. (pp. 63–88).
Francisco, J. M., & Burnett, C. A. (2008). Deliberate intuition: Giving intuitive insights their rightful place in the creative problem solving thinking skills model. In K. J. Lewis (Ed.), Creativity and innovation, management journal conference (pp. 236–253).
Gavetti, G., & Rivkin, J. W. (2005). How strategists really think: Tapping the power of analogy. Harvard Business Review, 83(4), 54–63.
Gentner, D., & Jeziorski, M. (1993). The shift from metaphor to analogy in western science. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (2nd ed., pp. 447–480). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Goel, A. K. (1997). Design, analogy, and creativity. IEEE Expert, 12(3), 62–70.
Goldschmidt, G. (2001). Visual analogy: A strategy for design reasoning and learning. In Design knowing and learning: Cognition in design education (pp. 199–220). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Holyoak, K. J., & Thagard, P. (1989). Analogical mapping by constraint satisfaction. Cognitive Science, 13(3), 295–355.
Hull, D., News, B., & May, P. (2014). Rocket Man: The otherworldly ambitions of Elon Musk. Retrieved May 28, 2017, from http://www.mercurynews.com/2014/04/14/rocket-man-the-otherworldly-ambitions-of-elon-musk/
Kabat-Zinn, J. (1990). Full catastrophe living: The program of the stress reduction clinic at the university of Massachusetts medical center. New York: Delta.
Kabat-Zinn, J. (1994). Wherever you go, there you are. New York: Hyperion Books.
Kabat-Zinn, J. (2009). Wherever you go, there you are: Mindfulness meditation in everyday life. New York: Hachette Books.
Keane, J. (1988). Civil society and the state: New European perspectives. New York: Verso Books.
Kluger, J. (2012). Rocket man: Billionaire Elon Musk is getting America back in the space game. Retrieved May 20, 2017, from http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,2116714-2,00.html
Kruglanski, A. W., & Gigerenzer, G. (2011). Intuitive and deliberate judgments are based on common principles. Psychological Review, 118(1), 97–109.
Lewis, K. J., Borst, G., & Kosslyn, S. M. (2011). Integrating visual mental images and visual percepts: New evidence for depictive representations. Psychological Research, 75(4), 259–271.
Linehan, M. (1993). Cognitive-behavioral treatment of borderline personality disorder. New York: Guilford Press.
Liu, X. G. (2003). Classifying the Zhuangzi chapters (No. 65). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Center for Chinese.
Marlatt, G. A., & Kristeller, J. L. (1999). Mindfulness and meditation. In W. R. Miller (Ed.), Integrating spirituality into treatment: Resources for practitioners (pp. 67–84). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Mosher, D. (2016). Elon Musk’s full Mars rocket and spaceship talk. Retrieved September 29, 2016, from http://www.businessinsider.com/elonmusk-mars-speech-transcript-2016-9
Musk, E. (2012). The future of energy and transport (Interview). Retrieved May 23, 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKHyZxSCseE&list=PL2Sr-npLuQliTbJboBPVg-N2yEbzE4bhE
Musk, E. (2015a). Qing Hua university China interview (Interview). Retrieved May 23, 2017, from https://www.tesla.cn/videos/dialogue-qianyingyielon-full-1022
Musk, E. (2015b). Knowledge as a semantic tree (Interview). Retrieved June 20, 2017, from https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2rgsan/i_am_elon_musk_ceocto_of_a_rocket_company_ama/
Musk, E. (2017). Elon Musk on how to start up a business (Interview). Retrieved April 10, 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gg23Y9Ua4qE
Nisbett, R. E., Peng, K., Choi, I., & Norenzayan, A. (2001). Culture and systems of thought: Holistic versus analytic cognition. Psychological Review, 108(2), 291–310.
Oxford Dictionary. (2016). Cognition. In Oxford dictionary (online). Oxford Press. Accessed February 4, 2016, from https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/cognition
Pavlovich, K., & Krahnke, K. (2012). Empathy, connectedness and organisation. Journal of Business Ethics, 105(1), 131–137.
Peng, K., & Nisbett, R. E. (1999). Culture, dialectics, and reasoning about contradiction. American Psychologist, 54(9), 741–754.
Pylyshyn, Z. W. (1973). What the mind’s eye tells the mind’s brain: A critique of mental imagery. Psychological Bulletin, 80(1), 1–12. 164.
Pylyshyn, Z. (2003). Return of the mental image: Are there really pictures in the brain? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(3), 113–118.
Ren, J., Huang, Z., Luo, J., Wei, G., Ying, X., Ding, Z., Wu, Y., & Luo, F. (2011). Meditation promotes insightful problem-solving by keeping people in a mindful and alert conscious state. Science China Life Sciences, 54(10), 961–965.
Schwartz, J. M., Stapp, H. P., & Beauregard, M. (2005). Quantum physics in neuroscience and psychology: A neurophysical model of mind-brain interaction. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 360(1458), 1309–1327.
Segal, Z. V., Teasdale, J. D., Williams, J. M., & Gemar, M. C. (2002). The mindfulness-based cognitive therapy adherence scale: Inter-rater reliability, adherence to protocol and treatment distinctiveness. Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, 9(2), 131–138.
Siggelkow, N. (2007). Persuasion with case studies. The Academy of Management Journal, 50(1), 20–24.
Simmons, M. (2016). How Elon Musk learns faster and better than everyone else. Retrieved July 20, 2017, from https://medium.com/@michaeldsimmons/how-elon-musk-learns-faster-and-better-than-everyone-else-104806b23df8#.9kjo7z3x9
Smallwood, J., & O’Connor, R. C. (2011). Imprisoned by the past: Unhappy moods lead to a retrospective bias to mind wandering. Cognition and Emotion, 25(8), 1481–1490.
Smallwood, J., Ruby, F. J., & Singer, T. (2013). Letting go of the present: Mind-wandering is associated with reduced delay discounting. Consciousness and Cognition, 22(1), 1–7.
Sowden, P. T., Pringle, A., & Gabora, L. (2015). The shifting sands of creative thinking: Connections to dual-process theory. Thinking and Reasoning, 21(1), 40–60.
Tesla News (2015). Retrieved April 3, 2017, from https://www.tesla.cn/en/node/23354
Thompson, V. A. (2009). Dual process theories: A metacognitive perspective. In Two minds: Dual processes and beyond. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Thompson, V. A., Turner, J. A. P., & Pennycook, G. (2011). Intuition, reason, and metacognition. Cognitive Psychology, 63(3), 107–140.
Vance, A. (2016). Is Elon Musk an expert generalist or specialist? Retrieved July 26, 2017, from https://www.quora.com/Is-Elon-Musk-an-expertgeneralist-or-specialist
Vance, A. (2017). Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the quest for a fantastic future. New York: Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
Vosniadou, S. (1989). Analogical reasoning as a mechanism in knowledge acquisition: A developmental perspective. Similarity and analogical reasoning, 413–437.
Wang, Q. (1997). The essence and significance of “Qu Xiang Bi Lei” in Chinese traditional science. History of Natural Science, 16(4), 297–303.
Wang, S. (2012). Return to the original thinking – The wisdom of China from Xiang thinking perspective. Nanjing: Jiangsu People’s Publishing House.
Wang, L., & Lawson, M. J. (2015). Visual mental imagery: A key representational format. In H. Askell-Williams (Ed.), Transforming the future of learning with educational research (pp. 36–50). Hershey, PA: IGI Global.
Wang, S., & Li, M. (2006). Percept Zhuangzi with intuitive Wuity: From Xiang thinking perspective. Nanjing: Jiangsu People’s Publishing House.
Wang, X., & Li, P. P. (2017). A conceptual framework of “Wu”-based innovation at the team level: A case study on indigenous innovation in the context of aerospace projects. Foreign Economy and Management, 39(3), 3–23.
Wang, Q., & Liu, G. (1993). Chinese traditional abstract thinking from Chinese medicine adopting “xiang”. Journal of Philosophy, 1993(4), 45–50.
Wittgenstein, L., & von Wright, G. H. (1998). Wittgenstein’s Nachlass the Bergen Electronic Edition. Charlottesville, VA: InteLex Corporation.
Yang, Y. (2008). The general theory of sentiment and wuity. Beijing: People’s Publishing House.
Zachary, K. D. (2016). Elon Musk’s best quotes on business & innovation. Retrieved July 20, 2017, from https://elonmusknews.org/blog/elon-musk-business-innovation-quotes
Zhang, D. N., & Cheng, Z. Y. (1991). The preference of Chinese thinking. Beijing: China Social Sciences Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Wang, X., Gloor, P.A. (2018). Wuity as Higher Cognition Combining Intuitive and Deliberate Judgments for Creativity: Analyzing Elon Musk’s Way to Innovate. In: Grippa, F., Leitão, J., Gluesing, J., Riopelle, K., Gloor, P. (eds) Collaborative Innovation Networks. Studies on Entrepreneurship, Structural Change and Industrial Dynamics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74295-3_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74295-3_14
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-74294-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-74295-3
eBook Packages: Business and ManagementBusiness and Management (R0)