Elastic Thinking

CORE DEFINITION

Elastic thinking describes the ability to move flexibly among reasoning modes, including divergent generation, analogy and the deliberate breaking of existing frames, and to remain adaptive under uncertainty. The core proposition is that rigid, rule-following thought performs well in stable environments but fails when the problem is genuinely new, because the existing frame supplies no applicable rule. The key qualification is that elasticity is not an alternative to rigorous analysis but a complement to it, and divergent flexibility without subsequent convergence produces ideas that never become decisions.