John Bielenberg is wrong

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'Thinking wrong'

Bielenberg is also an entrepreneur, an educator and a proponent of 'thinking wrong' - somebody who sees conventional thinking as a threat to creativity and design. Often, says Bielenberg, the creative process goes something like this - get brief, boom, solution - designers become victims of their own heuristic neural pathways (learned, pre-determined behaviour). Thinking wrong disrupts that process and offers the potential for truly creative solutions.

Project M

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One of Bielenberg's best known initiatives is Project M, an annual initiative that helps design students think about design with a social consciousness. Project M famously created the Mbulance, an old ambulance his students converted into a rolling design studio, which donated equipment and supplies to Gulf Coast designers displaced by hurricane Katrina.

Another Project M initiative was Free Pie, which started when a Project M student revealed her hidden talent to be making pies. In a tough economy, free pie and coffee draw people together and gives them an opportunity to have a conversation.

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From this humble idea arose PieLab in rural Alabama. PieLab was established as an eatery that could bring a still racially segmented community together in a neutral space. It became so popular that soon a bigger space was required, a space, that on a budget of US$9000, took second place at the James Beard awards for restaurant design (the entry for the new restaurant at the Guggenheim won).

More recently, he partnered with Alex and Ana Bogusky (from Crispin Porter + Bogusky fame) and Rob Schuham to form COMMON, which is focused on social entrepreneurship and aims to 'replace competitive advantage with collaborative advantage', and with Greg Galle to launch FUTURE, a similar concept but that works with larger organisations and enterprises to drive positive change in the world.

Bielenberg is visiting South Africa as a guest speaker at Design Indaba 2012 taking place at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, from today, Wednesday, 29 February until Friday 2 March. He also brought along COMMON Pitch: South Africa, which takes place on 29 February at Cape Town's City Hall, where social innovation start-up teams will compete for a R200 000 prize by pitching, in five minutes each, their business ideas to a panel of judges.

Tell us more about the concept behind 'thinking wrong.'

Bielenberg: At the core of how humans make decisions and solve problems is a process that drives the brain to solutions that are familiar, predictable and comfortable. This may be efficient, but it doesn't necessarily produce truly creative or unique solutions.