In the business world, we are always looking for new ways of viewing the future, of how to be more innovative and creative to insure future success. In fact, we are so interested in gaining insights in an increasingly competitive and global economy, we have driven business books to a new growth business. (If you've been to Borders Books recently, you know what I mean. The business section has exploded, and the shelves have been rearranged and expanded several times in the past two years.) One of the popular concepts to come out of this new thinking is the "paradigm shift." Have you heard of this? A paradigm shift is a change in viewpoint that suddenly brings new insights into the problem at hand. ... a change in viewpoint that suddenly brings new insights into the problem at hand.
For example, I remember reading in Readers Digest, sometime in junior high school, about a tractor trailer that had failed to see the low clearance warning sign and had wedged itself under an overpass. (If you travel to the Old Greenwich train station, you may have seen this first hand, at the railroad bridge on Sound Beach Avenue. It seems to happen there once a year.) So this truck is stuck under the overpass and the driver can't back out. The town's public works people are called in by the highway police, along with a local civil engineering firm. Pushing with a large tow truck fails. So they examine the bridge and the truck and consider the options of dismantling the trailer or removing a bridge girder. A young boy of nine who is watching all this with great interest from his bicycle, finally goes up to one of the engineers, tugs on his sleeve, and says, "Hey mister" "why don't you just let the air out of the tires!" And sure enough, it works. That's a paradigm shift: looking at the problem in a new way, from a new frame of reference. And we're left scratching our heads, saying "son of a gun!"
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