In a conference held last month(2002.11), I had an opportunity to speak after the keynote speech by a Nobel Prize winner in economics.

In his presentation, it was very easy to understand his thinking process and see how each topic takes a part and contributes to the whole presentation. He did not use MS PowerPoint ( he later told me that he wasn’t a big fan of Microsoft products ) but used a tool called “MindManager”(※) to present his thoughts. It was a first time for me to see the tool being utilized effectively and realized how powerful the tool is in putting together one’s thoughts and forming it into a model. The presentation was also interesting as I was able to see what’s on the mind of a Nobel Prize winner.

In the reception held after the conference, I asked him what kind of information does he find precious and how he gathers them. He said that when something that is not compatible to his his “model” happens in the real world, he seeks for what caused the deviation from his model. That information, the cause of deviation, is what he consider very precious.

Precious information that he describes could only be gathered when a person a constantly keep one’s model in mind and assesses events happen in the real world considering if it fits to the model, and if the deviation exists, seek what is causing the deviation from the model.

The first step is to establish one’s own model.