Built In: Divergent Thinking: What It Is, How It Works

“Bring Your Weird,” is one of the values at Panzura, a cloud-management software company based in San Jose, California. “We believe that different thinking is what makes us awesome, and we encourage everyone to be their authentic self at all times,” said Ed Peters, chief innovation officer. 

This “different thinking,” also known as divergent thinking, has resulted in many effective decisions for Panzura, including moving the company’s entire product-development and quality-assurance efforts to its Mexican nearshore unit, rather than nearshoring only parts of the process....

Both divergent and convergent thinking have their place in a leader’s skillset, said Spencer Harrison of Insead. Leaders who deal with stable and settled situations might benefit more from convergent thinking, while leaders with unstable, volatile environments might do well to think only divergently. 

“What research suggests is that divergent thinking might help you see new possibilities, but you would still need convergent thinking to realize and execute on those possibilities,” he said. “That said, because education and organizations tend to over-reward conformity, divergent thinking is probably a bit more rare and therefore likely more valuable especially in the long run over the course of a career,” Harrison said.