Think Bigger: How to Innovate Sheena

Iyengar
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 Iyengar inspires the creative problem solver in all of us.
— Michael Bloomberg

THINK
BIGGER

HOW TO INNOVATE

SHEENA IYENGAR
T HINK BIGGER
ALSO BY SHEENA IYENGAR

The Art of Choosing

 Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
cup.columbia.edu

Copyright © 2023 Sheena Iyengar

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Iyengar, Sheena, author.
Title: Think bigger : how to innovate / Sheena Iyengar.
Description: New York : Columbia University Press, [2023] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022032389 (print) | LCCN 2022032390 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780231198844 (hardback) | ISBN 9780231552837 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Problem solving. | Creative thinking.
Classification: LCC BF449 .I94 2023 (print) | LCC BF449 (ebook) |
DDC 153.4/3—dc23/eng/20220726
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022032389
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022032390

Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and

durable acid-free paper.
Printed in the United States of America

Cover design: Noah Arlow

Cover image: Shutterstock
This book is dedicated to Ishaan.
 CONTENTS

Preface ix

PA R T ON E

1 What Is Think Bigger? 3

2 The Creative Brain 35

PA R T T WO

3 Step 1: Choose the Problem 65

What problem do you want to solve?
4 Step 2: Break Down the Problem 90
What are the subproblems that make up your problem?
5 Step 3: Compare Wants 108
What are the motivations and preferences of relevant decision-makers?
6 Step 4: Search In and Out of the Box 130
What solutions have been tried to date?
7 Step 5: Choice Map 163
Imagine and reimagine new combinations of tactics.
8 Step 6: The Third Eye 191
Do others see what you see?

Acknowledgments 211
Bibliography 215
Index 229
 PREFACE

W hat do you do when you have a problem and there is no

known solution? Think Bigger shows you, step-by-step, how
to create meaningful choices for whatever complex problem you face.
My earlier book, The Art of Choosing (2010), summarizes years of
research on one key question: How do we get the most from choice?
There I describe the various dilemmas we face for different kinds of
choices and what we can do to become better at finding and picking
the best from the bunch. But sometimes we face a bigger problem:
there are no choices to pick from. We have to create new choices;
not choose among those we already know.
Growing up blind, I faced this bigger problem again and again.
Could I learn to cook? Would I ever be able to travel the world on
my own? Could I become a scientist? Could I perform on stage?
Today, I know the answers to these questions is “yes,” and I know
the “how” behind them. That knowledge comes from my per-
sonal struggles but also from a treasure trove of new research on
problem-solving. The result is this book: a method for creating new
choices to solve complex problems of all kinds. I call the method
Think Bigger.
I set about this task in a formal way some ten years ago, when
I became director of the Entrepreneurship Center at Columbia
 PREFACE

Business School. I noticed that our many courses on entrepre-

neurship taught students how to implement a new idea—but not
how to get that idea in the first place. Not all new ideas are equal,
just like not all choices are equal. I found that the field of innova-
tion offered methods to get new ideas, but these dated from more
than half a century ago. They failed to take into account the recent
breakthrough in neuroscience called Learning+Memory. It lets us
actually see how imagination works in the human mind.
This book guides you through the Think Bigger method in detail.
The first part provides the theory, and the second part explains the six
steps that make up the nuts and bolts of the method. A companion vol-
ume, The Think Bigger Workbook, offers even more practical detail. An
Appendix lists the many people who helped develop, test, and improve
the Think Bigger method over the past few years at Columbia.
I began to teach Think Bigger to my business students as a formal
course. Their ideas for innovation were so intriguing that I thought
practitioners might want to hear them—so I invited experts from
various fields such as medicine, finance, and retail to listen to the
ideas my students created. Again and again, these seasoned pro-
fessionals used the same word to describe how my students were
thinking about problems and solutions: empowering.
That's when the lightbulb turned on. I realized that Think Bigger
had value beyond the classroom. All kinds of people want new ways
to think about generating solutions to the complex problems that
they face. Whatever your politics or station in life, I think we can all
agree that our world badly needs more innovation.
There are many success stories of those who have learned to
apply Think Bigger to innovation problems of all kinds, in all fields
of human endeavor—even in their personal lives. In this book,
I will show you how to deliberately form creative ideas—and most
importantly, how anyone can be creative once they understand the
roadmap to creative problem-solving. By the end, I hope to help
release us from the outdated paradigms that have kept the concept
of creativity reserved for the transcendent few and open it to the
many.

x
PART ONE
 1
WHAT IS THINK BIGGER?

SHE IS A BIG IDEA

I live in Manhattan, a small island rich in its unique capacity to cap-

ture our imagination—the creative part of ourselves that we often
lose sight of in our frenzy of activity. Of course, this is part and
parcel of being a New Yorker. We are in it, the very thick of it, where
so much seems possible if we can keep ourselves from spinning out
of control. To live like this without losing your way, you have to
develop resilience and find moments of quiet equanimity.
For me, those grounding moments come in the early mornings,
when it’s chilly even in summer. I like to go out on bike rides while
the world is still in its waking hour—when the relative quiet of the
streets is peaceful and the cold city air still bites. When I ride, it’s
in tandem with a friend. With so many dizzying options to choose
from, I prefer riding a familiar route along the Hudson River and
down toward the tip of the groggy island, aiming to arrive at our
usual destination just before sunrise.
No matter how often we make this journey—a kind of pilgrimage—
I find myself in awe of what awaits us. I’m blind, so the experi-
ence unfolds in my mind, guided by my nonvisual senses and the
descriptions I’ve read and heard.
 PART ONE

Figure 1.1 The Statue of Liberty with the Manhattan skyline in the background.

As the air shifts and warms, the first rays of sunlight cast a pink
glow before us. This evolves into other colors as the beams of light
reach across the harbor, dappling the water, then brightening the
edges of the buildings on the opposite shore. Despite the brilliant
show of light, my attention is fixed on a tall figure with a firm,
inscrutable face. To call her beautiful would be reductive. Her aura
seems as ethereal and far-reaching as the sunlight that has caught
up to my gaze and slowly illuminates her from base, to body, to
crown. Ah, the crown! As the light reaches its seven points in halo,
each bursts outward with a sharp glow. They look like white-hot
ingots piercing through the heavy morning haze. Only, they don’t
give off any residue but light. After a while, her glimmering crown
ignites upward, finally reaching the raised right arm that bears her
lighted torch—which marks the end of our morning journey.

4
 WHAT IS THINK BIGGER?

You might think that New Yorkers would grow weary of the Statue
of Liberty (see figure 1.1), and I’m sure many do. But I continue to
draw much strength and calm from Our Lady of the Harbor. When
I visited her as a child on annual school trips, I was already losing
my sight. Perhaps I never saw her with my own eyes. Or if I did, she
was a giant blur—and even up close, an amalgam of smaller blurs
that I could not make coherent. Still, I was impressed by just how
big she was—151 feet tall, on a 154-foot pedestal, and weighing 204
tons. I remember feeling her immense height through my feet, as
I trudged my way up the seemingly endless winding staircase, step
by step, to the crown.
Inside the sculpture, I wondered where she came from—and
thankfully, we learned that too. A French sculptor, Frédéric Auguste
Bartholdi, created her as a gift of thanks from his country to the
United States for serving as a model of democracy to the world. It
took nine years to build. I wondered if during the building, he ever
thought that one day, close to five million people would visit her
every year, including special delegations of dignitaries from around
the globe? She has become, by far, the most famous sculpture in the
history of the world. And for me, a child of immigrant parents, an
outsized symbol of all things that hold promise. To this day, tears fill
my eyes when I hear Emma Lazarus’s famous poem inscribed at the
sculpture’s base, where Lady Liberty speaks these words: Give me
your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free . . .
Over the years, the nature of my interest—and faith—in Lady
Liberty has changed but not diminished. I’ve come to appreciate
other aspects of her greatness and better understand the stuff she’s
made of. For instance, we all know that she is one of the foremost
icons of America. And we know that she is also an important global
symbol of tolerance, freedom, and possibility. She is somehow
both stern and compassionate, with a significance that can be both
shared and personal, multiple and singular.
So much has been said and written about her as an inspiration,
but rarely do we talk about the inspiration of her own creation. How
is such a remarkable object thought? How might a child marveling at
the Statue of Liberty learn to create something both like and unlike

5
 PART ONE

her—inspired by similarly notable objects but also unique? In other

words, how exactly do we get our best ideas? And once we have an
idea, how do we know if we should pursue it?
That’s what this book is about: the pieces that come together to
create our “big ideas.”
Modern science—in particular, neuroscience and cognitive
science—is revealing to us how creative ideas develop in the human
mind. We’re learning to reconstruct what happened in the mind
of Bartholdi, the sculptor, and in the minds of other great innova-
tors throughout history. Here I present this new knowledge to you
as a six-step method called Think Bigger. Think Bigger will enable
you to do what Bartholdi did: generate, identify, and cultivate your
best ideas. It will enable you to do this in your own way, depending
on your own circumstances, and in your own time. At every step,
I draw on the relevant science and on many instructive examples
to explain my rationale and show you how to put this knowledge
into practice.

THE STORY OF AN IDEA

The idea of the Statue of Liberty begins with Bartholdi himself. He

was born in 1834 at Colmar, France, near the German border. His
father died when he was two, and his mother was left to raise him
and his brother by herself. Upon seeing Frederic’s blossoming tal-
ent in art, she moved the family to Paris to give him a chance to
make his living as an artist.
In Paris, the industrious Bartholdi toiled as an apprentice at vari-
ous trades, which included stints working under the painter Ary
Scheffer and the architect Jean-François Soitoux. It didn’t take long
for his hard work to pay off. In 1853, at just eighteen years old, Bar-
tholdi’s collection of sculptures was featured in the Salon de Paris.
Two years later, the Salon again called on Bartholdi, sending him
to Egypt, along with a delegation of artists, to study the country’s
ancient art. When Bartholdi arrived, what struck him most was the
scale of these ancient works. He marveled at the massive statues

6
 WHAT IS THINK BIGGER?

that guarded the royal tombs and became instantly transfixed at

the behemoths that loomed before him at seemingly every turn. In
that moment of reverie, a dream formed in his head: he wanted to
create his own colossus.
His chance came in 1867, when the builders of the Suez Canal
invited sculptors to design a lighthouse for the Canal’s entrance.
They meant it to serve both as a working lighthouse and as a tourist
attraction for this new gateway to Asia. Bartholdi proposed a giant
woman in swirling robes holding a torch to guide the way to the
world beyond the canal. He called her “Egypt Carrying the Light to
Asia.” In the end, the builders rejected all the artistic submissions
and put up an ordinary lighthouse instead. When he returned to
Paris, Bartholdi found another use for his sketch. His dear friend,
Edouard de Laboulaye, was a member of the French national assem-
bly, the president of the French Anti-Slavery Society, and would
later be a Life Senator. Laboulaye saw the American Revolution
and Civil War as triumphs of democracy that could inspire other
nations, especially his own. He proposed a statue, paid for by the
French people, as a gift to America to embody that inspiration. And
he asked Bartholdi to design it.
From there, the two friends set out to raise the required money.
The cost for this massive undertaking was $250,000—around
$5.5 million today. They traveled across France, urging everyone
to donate what they could. By the end, nearly 160,000 French citi-
zens did—poor, rich, farmers, maids, business owners, and other
artists alike. For Laboulaye, this democratic source of funds was
fundamental to the whole idea and fully embodied the spirit of the
future project.
In 1871, Laboulaye and Bartholdi went to America to choose and
prepare the site. Bedloe’s Island was quickly determined to be the
perfect place for Bartholdi to realize his vision, as it was the central
focus of the landscape upon entering New York Harbor. Bartholdi
declared that the island would be the “gateway to America.” It was
the perfect place to display Liberty to the world.
Once the site was established, the two friends carried on raising
money across the United States. As an attraction, Bartholdi took

7
 PART ONE

Lady Liberty’s arm on the fundraising tour, where spectators could

climb a ladder up the arm, to the torch, for the price of fifty cents.
They eventually set the arm up in Madison Square Garden in Man-
hattan, where it stood for six years. All told, some 250,000 people
made the climb.
On October 28, 1886, twenty years after her inception, Bartholdi
unveiled the Statue of Liberty to the world, and to history. Our
iconic symbol of freedom was born.
Thus marks the end of the story as the history books tell it. And
it’s truly an inspirational story. We love such stories, where we can
imagine ourselves as the hero like Bartholdi, who sets out on a
quest, overcomes countless obstacles, and achieves a long sought-
after dream in the end. It makes us wonder if one day we too could
do something great.
Now, that’s all well and good. But let me ask you a different
question—and I want you to really think about this before answering—
how would you start?
See, these heroic stories have two key elements: creative genius
and ceaseless effort. You can imagine the ceaseless effort part: you
work hard to make your dreams come true. But what about the first
part: the creative idea? Can you pick any dream, and then just work
hard to make it come true? Of course not. You must choose your
dream carefully. But how? What makes for a good idea? And how
exactly do you get one?
Unfortunately, the traditional tales of heroic achievement skip
that part. The process of generating the idea itself has remained a
little black box, opaque and impossible to open. That is, except if
you’re a creative genius. Then the box just opens, like magic. For
the rest of us, that’s no help at all. If we’re not one of those lucky
few, there’s nothing we can do. At least that’s what we’ve always
been told.
Well, I am here to show you that what we’ve always been told is
wrong. There is no magic key. Anyone can open that black box of
creativity—you just need to understand a few simple things about
the mind, the process, and the people who have helped Think Bigger
come into being. If you want to understand how this innovation on

8
 WHAT IS THINK BIGGER?

innovation can help set you on a path to unlocking your creative

potential and generate big ideas, I invite you to join me. Over the
next eight chapters, I’ll show you how.

OPENING THE BLACK BOX

I want you to imagine a fantasy animal. No, not a dragon, phoenix,

or unicorn—it should be something entirely new. Pick up a piece of
paper and pen, and then draw your creation.
Now, look at your drawing. What do you see? Does it have eyes?
Does it have arms, wings, or legs? What about a tail?
Having done this exercise thousands of times, with all kinds of
people from schoolchildren to Fortune 500 executives, I can predict
that your creature has at least one familiar element. Even when we
try to imagine the unthinkable, we don’t produce something radi-
cally alien. Whenever we create, we consciously and unconsciously
draw upon what we already know. The elements are not new. The
combination is new.
From the figures we draw to the sentences we speak to the solu-
tions we create to solve our everyday problems, we’re constantly
innovating as humans. We learn from our experiences and our
observations of the world around us, break it up into pieces, and
use that knowledge to generate new ideas. Good, good, and good!
That’s exactly what Bartholdi did when he imagined his colossus.
He never told us how he got his idea, and it’s very possible that he
himself wasn’t even conscious of what he was doing. But modern
science tells us how the mind creates new ideas, and that lets us
see the elements that Bartholdi brought together to make his new
combination.
So let’s answer the question “How did Bartholdi get his idea?”
Remember Bartholdi’s first inspiration: the colossal tomb sculp-
tures of ancient Egypt (see figure 1.2).
Then the call for a Suez Canal lighthouse led him to draw a colos-
sus in that form, with a torch as the light (see figure 1.3). As we see
below, already he is close to his idea for Lady Liberty.

9
Figure 1.2 The greater temple of the Abu Simbel in Egypt shows statues of
Ramesses II, the third pharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt, who is known
for his successful military campaigns and monuments. The temple is located on the
Nile’s western bank, south of Cairo. Wikimedia Commons.

Figure 1.3 Bartholdi’s “Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia,” watercolor (1869).
Wikimedia Commons.
 WHAT IS THINK BIGGER?

Bartholdi then switches hands for the torch and bends the other
arm to hold a key object. We find those elements in La Verité, a
painting by Jules Lefebvre from the time Bartholdi made his Liberty
design (see figure 1.4).
Now, what of the crown, with the seven points that form a halo
around Lady Liberty’s head? That Bartholdi finds in his pocket, on
the back of a five franc silver coin (see figure 1.5). It’s the seal of
the French Second Republic, which overthrew the last French king
in 1848. The figure is a version of the Roman goddess Libertas.
Last but not least, the face—what can we make of that inscru-
table, regal visage? Well, it’s the very face Bartholdi’s eyes gazed
upon when he first came into the world. Many commentators have
noticed the uncanny resemblance between the face of Bartholdi’s
mother (see figure 1.6) and that of Lady Liberty—and how he
stayed close to his mother throughout his life. When asked if his

Figure 1.4 La Vérité by Jules Lefebvre, oil on canvas (1870). Wikimedia Commons.

11
Figure 1.5 Obverse (left) side of the great seal, adopted in 1848; 174 years ago. The
headdress of the Liberty featured on the obverse side is similar to that of the Statue
of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World), which would be offered by the French
people to the U.S. people forty years later. Wikimedia Commons.

Figure 1.6 A portrait of Charlotte Bartholdi.

Courtesy of Granger Academic.
 WHAT IS THINK BIGGER?

mother’s face was the inspiration for Lady Liberty’s, Bartholdi did
not deny it.
Now we can answer how Bartholdi got the idea for the Statue of
Liberty. She is the size and form of the colossal statues guarding
the Egyptian tombs. She has the role and siting of the Suez light-
house. She has the posture of La Verité. She has the crown, name,
and symbolism of Libertas. And she has the face of his mother.
See figure 1.7.
We might want to believe that artistic endeavors are different
from other everyday acts of creation. Painting a masterpiece is not
at all like drawing up your grocery list for the week or solving a
mathematical equation. Artists are greater than us—they must have
some magical ability to think of ideas unbounded by the past or
present. Everything they create is completely new. Right? Well, your
favorite masterpiece might feel entirely new. It might even give you
a new perspective on life. But there remains an elusive, undeniably
familiar feeling in each artistic creation we admire.
Consider the work of the most famous artist of the twentieth
century, Pablo Picasso. Known today as one of the most prolific
artists ever, Picasso is estimated to have produced fifty thousand
pieces of art. His distinct style of using bold, distorted figures also
helped make modern art the main event rather than a sideshow.
Where did he get this distinctive style? The popular answer is sim-
ple: Picasso was a genius. It came out of his head like magic. But in
reality, like Bartholdi, Picasso put together previous elements.
Take a look at these two self-portraits (see figures 1.8 and 1.9).
Notice the difference: the painting on the right, from 1907, looks
like it was made by an entirely different artist than the one on the
left. The one on the right is the style that made Picasso famous. The
one on the left is not. In those six intervening years, what caused
this change?
Well, starting in the mid-nineteenth century, artists had a prob-
lem. They made their living by painting portraits and landscapes
realistic enough that the rich, and not-so-rich, bought them to hang
in their homes. The camera was invented around 1825, and over the
next decades, photographs became better, cheaper, and faster—and

13
 A B

C
D

E F

Figure 1.7a-f A comparison showing the progression of Bartholdi’s inspirations for

Lady Liberty, compared to the statue itself.
 WHAT IS THINK BIGGER?

Figure 1.9 Picasso’s Autoportrait Expressionist

Figure 1.8 Picasso’s Autoportrait Expression-
ist painting from his “Blue Period” (1901). Oil on
canvas.
© 2022 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights
Society (ARS), New York.
painting dated from his “African Period” (1907).
Oil on canvas.
© 2022 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights
Society (ARS), New York

people began to buy them instead of paintings. Toward the end of

the century, a new style solved the problem: Impressionism. At first
glance, an Impressionist painting looks like a photograph. But as
you get closer, you begin to see the scene dissolve into separate
brushstrokes meant to give a particular impression that the painter
wants to convey. Stylistically, it was something the camera could
not do.
Look back at those two portraits. Picasso’s self-portrait in 1901
is not exactly Impressionism, but the 1907 self-portrait has such
great distortion that you would have to stand very far away to think
it’s a photograph.

15
 PART ONE

Picasso came of age as a painter when Impressionism was already

a mainstream style. A few painters broke away in small ways—like
Georges Seurat, who broke the separate brushstrokes into even
smaller “points,” and Vincent Van Gogh, who swirled the separate
brushstrokes into hypnotic waves of color. But it was Henri Matisse
who first broke completely with the whole idea of small units of
paint like brushstrokes and points. He used big patches of color—
he called them “volumes”—in scenes that showed recognizable fig-
ures that were very distorted in color and shape. Technically, the
breakthrough was to use semiabstract volumes of color.
Matisse’s first great painting in this new style was The Joy of Life.
In the spring of 1906, it appeared in an independent Paris exhibi-
tion. It drew big crowds and became the talk of the Paris art world.
Picasso had never met Matisse, but they both knew Gertrude Stein.
She became famous for her modernist writing and as the host of a
salon in her Paris apartment that drew many modern painters—
and also writers such as Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and
Ezra Pound.
Picasso went to see The Joy of Life and then asked Stein to intro-
duce him to Matisse. She took Matisse to visit Picasso’s studio. The
two painters met a second time at Stein’s, and that’s when Picasso
found his style.
During this fateful meeting, Matisse brought along an African
sculpture. It was a Vili mask from Congo. Paris art shops had just
started importing art from France’s African colonies and those in
the avant-garde were always on the lookout for such cultural influ-
ences. When Picasso later asked Matisse to dinner, he brought
along the sculpture. There before him in the Paris café were the
two inspirations that Picasso would bring together to make his own
new style.
That night he went to his studio and started painting. And that
painting is still one of the most famous paintings of modern art: Les
Desmoiselles d’Avignon. In it we can clearly see Picasso’s two inspira-
tions (see figure 1.10).
Picasso never admitted his debt to Matisse. He reveled in the
mystique of the singular creative genius. Matisse, on the other

16
 A

B C

Figure 1.10 (a) Henri Matisse’s The Joy of Life. © 2022 Succession H. Matisse / Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York. (b) Henri Matisse bought this sculpted figurine cre-
ated by the Vili people of the Congo—it had a huge impact on him and on his friend
Pablo Picasso (Credit: Archives Matisse, Paris). (c) Pablo Picasso’s 1907 painting,
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, the first Cubist painting of the legendary art movement.
© 2022 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
 PART ONE

hand, proudly cited his sources. For The Joy of Life, he especially
drew from The Bathers by Cézanne and Persian miniatures from
medieval Iran (see figure 1.11).
Now that we understand how these three great artists (Bartholdi,
Picasso, and Matisse) got their ideas, it might seem that all they did
was take what they saw and combine it in new ways. Could it really
be that simple? First, let me be clear: this in no way takes away from
their talent or achievements. It just explains how they did what they
did, without the magical thinking that has always been attached to
the “singular creative genius.” Like all successful innovators, they

A B

Figure 1.11 (a) Paul Cézanne’s 1905 painting titled The Bathers. Philadelphia
Museum of Art: Purchased with the W. P. Wilstach Fund, 1937, W1937-1-1. Wikimedia
Commons. (b) Adam honored by angels on a Persian miniature portrait. Wikimedia
Commons. (c) Henri Matisse’s The Joy of Life.
© 2022 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

18
 WHAT IS THINK BIGGER?

were essentially “strategic copiers.” By this, I mean they learned

from examples of success, extracted the parts that worked well,
imagined new ways of using those pieces, and combined them to
create something new and meaningful.
Innovation is nothing more, and nothing less, than a new com-
bination of old ideas. Yet we know from personal experience that
all ideas are not equal. Often, people go through a draining cycle of
generating idea after idea only to find that the best idea is some-
thing banal. It’s why we can admire the genius behind artistic mas-
terpieces. Even as we break down their big ideas and lay out the
individual elements to see how they combined them, the whole of
their creations are more meaningful than the mere sum of the indi-
vidual parts. This is the signature of every successful innovation—
whether it’s your grandma’s famous apple pie, the Apple phone in
your pocket, or a great work of art.
The French scientist and mathematician Henri Poincaré
explained how to generate good ideas in his 1913 book, The Founda-
tions of Science: “Invention consists in avoiding the constructing of
useless combinations and in constructing the useful combinations
which are in infinite minority. . . . To invent is to discern, to choose.”
We’re all capable of generating an infinite number of creative
combinations—let’s call them “choices.” Creating a new choice
that’s valuable calls for great discernment. You must pick apart the
choices you’ve identified and the routes you could take to make
your idea real, and that’s no easy task. Of the multitudes of pieces
you could combine, and the infinite ways you could combine those
pieces, it’s the creator’s discernment that decides which of the myr-
iad combinations to keep.
The common definition of an innovation is “something new and
useful.” By definition, every combination is new. That’s the easy
part. The hard part is to identify a high-quality combination that’s
useful as well. So, how do we create the most useful combinations
(which, as Poincaré notes, are in the infinite minority)? That’s the
question this book will answer.
We can now refine our definition of innovation: a novel, useful
combination of old ideas that come together to solve a complex problem.

19
 PART ONE

This definition echoes an older statement by the economist

Joseph Schumpeter, known today as the founder of entrepreneurial
studies and the source of the idea of “creative destruction.” For
Schumpeter, the role of innovation is “to produce means to com-
bine the things and forces within our reach.”
In Think Bigger, I focus on innovations that respond to a stated
problem. It might seem that some innovations come out of the
blue, but the reality is that even those innovators saw how their
innovation solved a particular problem. If it did not solve a prob-
lem, it wasn’t a “useful combination,” in Poincaré’s terms. So the
keen innovator would pass it by. You only take action on innova-
tions that solve a problem.
In Think Bigger, you first identify and define a problem you
want to solve. This is true even for artistic innovations. Bartholdi’s
problem was how to symbolize freedom and democracy through
sculpture, and Picasso’s was how to find a unique style beyond
Impressionism that the public likes.
If you talk to artists as they work, they will tell you how they
solve a series of problems to make their creation. Or in the case of
Picasso, they just might not tell you all of the ways in which they
go about it.
Above all, Think Bigger provides a way for a single individual—
you—to get a better idea. You can do each step as a group as well
but always in the same sequence: first each person alone, then put
together a team result.
We will see that most other innovation methods rely on the
team, rather than the individual, for the actual idea. That is, they
skip over the question of how creative ideas form in the human
mind and simply say that putting ideas together from many people
makes the idea creative. As we see from Lady Liberty—and all other
real examples of innovation—that’s not how it works in the real
world. Yes, Bartholdi needed other people at each stage, both as
sources for inspiration and to help implement them. But the most
important creative steps happened in his own mind. Many hands
make light work, but they don’t make the light work. That is, a team
is made for work, not for thinking.

20
 WHAT IS THINK BIGGER?

So, if a team does Think Bigger together, each person will have
better ideas, and the sum total will be better too. If a team does not
follow Think Bigger, each person will have fewer creative ideas, and
the sum total will be less creative.
Throughout the method, there will be moments where I unravel
the process of innovation like I did for Picasso, Matisse, and Bar-
tholdi, as if it was a conscious method on the innovator’s part. In
reality, if you asked Bartholdi how he got his idea, he might not
be able to answer. Those few moments of inspiration are fleet-
ing, and he spent much more mental effort on implementing his
idea than on pondering how he got it in the first place. Picasso,
on the other hand, was a wily competitor who knew exactly what
he was doing.
In Think Bigger, we stay conscious of each mental step because
that’s the only way to repeat the steps for other ideas in the future.
We unlock the black box and make the problem-solving exercise
accessible for all and repeatable. Think Bigger empowers anyone,
anywhere, to solve a problem—whether it’s personal, professional,
or universal. Being deliberative allows us to speed up the process
of searching for and finding a solution rather than just waiting for
an idea to spontaneously arise. By providing more people with the
Think Bigger tools, I believe we will also have a better chance at
helping us—individually and collectively—create the solutions for
the greatest problems we face in the world today.
Think Bigger offers you a set of tools and skills to solve any
kind of complex problem, and then solve the next one too. Con-
sider a birdhouse. If I give you a complete set of tools, instruc-
tions, and pieces to build a birdhouse, then guide you through
the process, what you build might not be the greatest birdhouse
ever. It will have flaws in the structure and nicks in the wood.
But you won’t only have that birdhouse; you will know how to
build another birdhouse—one possibly better than the last. Think
Bigger teaches you how to innovate. And like any other skill, you
get better the more you do it. The first time you use this method,
you won’t have a perfect result. A novice only becomes a master
through practice.

21
 PART ONE

THINK BIGGER IN ACTION

Before I walk through the six steps of Thinking Bigger, I want to

show you two well-known innovations that have become an inte-
gral part of modern life. Just as we did when we told the story of
how Bartholdi and Picasso made their masterpieces, we will once
again take two innovations and deconstruct them to better under-
stand the thought process that created these products. Before,
I showed you the pieces that the innovators combined. Now I will
explain the series of steps that brought the pieces together. These
steps match our Think Bigger method.
Let’s begin with a problem that everyone faced in hot seasons
or hot climes in the days before air conditioning. Imagine it’s a hot
summer’s day in 1840 Philadelphia. You find yourself sweltering as
the sun steadily beats down on your head. You contemplate what
might cool you down and ponder a treat that’s cold, sweet, icy, and
creamy. Thinking back to an article you read, you imagine tasting
the ice cream George Washington once paid two hundred dollars
for in the summer of 1790. Then you remember reading about the
creamed strawberry ice delicacies that Dolley Madison made for
James Madison’s second inaugural banquet at the White House.
What about that advertisement you saw for Joseph Corre’s Parlor
advertising ice cream at the price of eleven pence per glass? Too bad
that was 3 percent of your yearly income as a housekeeper!
Today, we take for granted the ice cream truck that zooms down
the street, blasting a repetitive tune that tempts us to buy a cone
for a pittance compared to our yearly income. We stock our freezers
with tubs of ice cream from the grocery store for birthday celebra-
tions or to prepare for the summer. And don’t forget that ice cream
is the best antidote for a broken heart. Ice cream has become a
household staple—even for vegans. It’s affordable for many of us.
But it wasn’t always that way. If you lived in the 1840s, the high
price of ice, the intense labor, and the time it took to produce made
ice cream nearly impossible to enjoy unless you were wealthy. So
how did ice cream become so ubiquitous? And who do we have to
thank for making ice cream accessible for everyone, everywhere?

22
 WHAT IS THINK BIGGER?

That would be Nancy Johnson. She was in her fifties, a volunteer

for the American Missionary Association, the wife of a professor,
chemist, and physicist, and the mother of two.
Johnson saw that making ice cream was actually very time-
consuming, physical work, and it was also very expensive. So she
set out to find a way to make the process less labor-intensive and
less expensive by reducing the necessary products—like ice—while
preserving the final product for longer. It seemed like a waste to
spend nearly half the day making ice cream only to have it melt in
an hour.
Johnson found several problems that needed to be solved. Let’s
present her main problem as a question: How can I make ice cream
more accessible for everyone? In order to make this broad ques-
tion more solvable, we break the main question into four smaller
questions:

1. How do I make the outer container smaller so it uses less ice?

2. How do I make the ice cream colder faster and preserve it?
3. How do I create a method of mixing the cream that is less
labor-intensive?
4. How do I make ice cream smoother and creamier?

How did Johnson solve the first subproblem? Ice was expensive:
$2.13 a pound, or $68 in today’s money. In those days, you kept ice in
large containers like bathtubs and took the ice out as you needed it.
Butter churns used tall wooden buckets, but that would take too much
ice. Johnson used a simple wooden bucket instead (see figure 1.12).
That held the ice and the rock salt to slow the melting. Of course,
wooden buckets weren’t new. They were invented about four hundred
years before Johnson’s time and were in common use during the nine-
teenth century, and they were cheap and easy to handle. And they cer-
tainly helped solve the first part of her problem: use less ice.
How did she solve next the second subproblem? Well, since
freezers did not yet exist, this was going to be tricky. She started by
searching for the ways other foods and beverages were kept cold.
That led her to pewter. By the Middle Ages, long before Johnson’s

23
 PART ONE

Figure 1.12 Wooden water pail, typically used for wells. Wikimedia Commons.

time, certain inns used pewter for mugs to keep beer and ale cold
(see figure 1.13). More recently, pewter bathtubs kept water warm.
Before Johnson, when you made ice cream by hand, you used a
ceramic bowl that you kept carrying back to the tub of ice to make
it cold again. She replaced the ceramic with pewter and set it in her
wooden bucket with a layer of ice packed around it. This kept the
mixture cold and cut lots of time.
And pewter was cheap. It was a simple mixture of scrap metal,
such as tin, copper, bismuth, antimony, and even leftover silver.
So Johnson replaced the bathtub of ice with a wooden bucket that
held a single layer of ice and replaced the ceramic bowl that went
inside with a pewter one. Then cover it with a pewter lid, and your
ice cream stays cold for hours.
Now for Johnson’s third subproblem. Stirring a mixture of
cream, sugar, and other flavorings for hours on end was a grueling
task. It led to stiff arms, injured backs, and pulled shoulders. Paus-
ing often to rest just made the production time even longer. Was
there a simpler way to continuously mix the ingredients without
using so much arm power?

24
 WHAT IS THINK BIGGER?

Figure 1.13 Pewter mug dating from 1219, used to keep ales cool.
Courtesy of Sotheby’s.

To remedy this, Johnson added a hand crank—an invention

that went back to first-century China. From there, it spread to the
Roman Empire and on to the rest of Europe. The Eastern Mediter-
ranean even implemented hand cranks to grind spices and coffee
(see figure 1.14). In this application, the hand crank dramatically
cut the time and effort it took to stir the ice cream.
Now for the last subproblem: lumps and crystals. One of the
most frustrating parts about making ice cream by hand was that
after all that effort and expense, the cream often separated and
formed big icy lumps or smaller icy crystals. A butter churn would
force a wooden disc with holes in it down through the barrel
(see figure 1.15). The holes prevented the lumps and crystals, but
Johnson needed to scrape the colder ice cream off the sides or else
it would freeze. So she fixed spatulas (see figure 1.16) onto the
crank to scrape them through the mixture. Spatulas for greasy food
also had holes to let the grease drip out—like the butter churn disc.
All in all, Nancy Johnson combined four simple things to solve
the overall problem: the wooden bucket, pewter bowl, hand crank,

25
Figure 1.14 An antique herb/spice grinder featuring a metal hand crank and a
drawer to the base that collects the processed herb or spice. Wikimedia Commons.

Figure 1.15 Plunger butter churn. Wikimedia Commons.

Figure 1.16 Wooden spatula with holes, used for cooking.

Illustration by Emmaline Ellsworth.
 WHAT IS THINK BIGGER?

and her “dasher” paddles. In 1843, she filed U.S. patent number
US3254A (see figure 1.17). The Library of Congress identifies her
simple invention as a “disruptive technology” that made it possible
for everyone to make high-quality ice cream without electricity.
Johnson then sold her patent to William Young, a wholesaler of
kitchen equipment who mass-marketed the device as the Johnson
Patent Ice-Cream Freezer. Manufacturing ice cream soon became
a nationwide industry when a Pennsylvania milk dealer, Jacob Fus-
sell, opened the world’s first wholesale ice-cream factory in 1851.
Steam power later automated the churning process, and mechanical
refrigeration aided ice cream’s storage and transport. By the 1870s,
electric power and motors, packing machines, and new freezing
methods sped up ice-cream production tenfold. Each iteration of
the ice-cream maker used Johnson’s device as the base mechanism.
Notice the structure of this innovation process. It starts with
defining the problem in a specific and concrete way. Then you break

Figure 1.17 Nancy Johnson’s final patented product from the U.S. Patent Office, 1843.

27
 PART ONE

it down into essential parts. Next, you search for solutions that
already exist to identify ways the different parts of the problem can
be solved. You then combine the pieces in a new way that makes
them all work together in harmony.
Let me give you one more familiar example that shows the basics
of the Think Bigger method. Once again, it starts with a problem to
solve. In 1899, when Henry Ford founded his own car company, a
motor vehicle cost from $850 to $2,000—well beyond the average
person’s means. Ford saw a problem worth solving: How could he
make the car affordable for the average person?
Like Johnson, Ford broke his problem down:

1. How do I reduce the cost of labor?

2. How do I reduce production time?
3. How do I reduce the cost of materials?

Let’s start with labor. The previous century’s Industrial Rev-

olution brought in the assembly line, where products are lined
up on the factory floor and specialized workers move along the
line to put in standard parts. In 1906, Oldsmobile was the first to
apply that concept to automobile production. Ford imitated that
process, but he wasn’t satisfied. He wanted to use fewer workers
to make more cars—or the same number of workers to produce
cars faster. Note how this blends into the second subproblem: to
reduce production time.
The answer to these pieces of the puzzle came from outside the
auto industry. William “Pa” Klann, Ford’s chief engineer, visited
the Swift slaughterhouse in the Chicago stockyards with Ford’s
problem breakdown in mind. He saw how the animal moved on
an overhead line from station to station, where workers stood still
and took off different parts in the butchering process. It was a mov-
ing disassembly line. Do it the other way—for cars—and you have a
moving assembly line.
When Ford reconfigured his factory from a stationary assembly
line to a moving line, the result was dramatic. The time it took to
build a car fell from 12.5 hours to 90 minutes.

28
 WHAT IS THINK BIGGER?

That left the third subproblem: reducing the cost of materials.

Ford noted that paint was one of the most expensive items he used.
And the available resin-based oil paint took more than a month to
dry. In the 1920s, chemists developed a new kind of paint—nitro-
cellulose black lacquer—that dried in less than a week and cost
half as much as oil paint. Once applied and rubbed down, the black
lacquer paint gave a unique shine to the cars, similar to the gloss
on Japanese art and woodwork, hence the process being dubbed,
“japanning.” By 1927, Ford began japanning all his cars—a change
that inspired his famous quote, “The customer can get the Model T
painted in any color he wants, so long as it’s black.”
We can now see how Ford made the car more affordable. He
broke the problem down into parts and found previous solutions
for each subproblem: the Oldsmobile assembly line, the moving
tracks in a slaughterhouse, and japanning. It was a new combina-
tion of previous elements.
Before his innovation, in 1908, Ford sold 6,389 Model Ts at $850
each. Starting in 1915, he sold 472,350 at $350 each. In 1925, the
figures were two million sold at a price of $250 per car. By that
time, with incremental improvements, each car took only thirty-
three minutes to build.
Other industries adopted Ford’s assembly line, drastically reduc-
ing costs and production times for countless products across the
globe. But note how Ford innovated: every ingredient in his equa-
tion already existed. Ford identified useful existing solutions for
each of his subproblems by searching within—and outside—his
own industry. By combining these solutions, Ford created a big idea.
Notice how Ford searched far and wide. He learned a new tac-
tic to reduce his cost of labor from an entirely different industry;
meatpacking. By searching among existing methods, he found one
that reduced the cost of materials to build cars. This element is
relatively low tech—a moving chain. Too often, people think that
innovation equals new and more complicated technology. Even
when there is a new technology, it typically solves only one narrow
problem. It’s up to other innovators to make new combinations to
apply that technology to new problems. For example, before Henry

29
 PART ONE

Ford, Karl Benz found a new use for the internal combustion engine
that Etienne Lenoir invented: the motorcar. Figuring out how to
use a new technology to solve new problems calls for creative
combination—not more technology.
You have probably been told at some time to “think outside
the box.” But has anyone ever told you how to do it? Successful
innovators, like Johnson and Ford, looked for solutions to pieces
of their puzzle in two places: within their own industry and then
beyond it. That’s thinking “inside” and “outside” the box. You need
both. Think Bigger recreates what Johnson and Ford did in six clear
steps—and after learning these steps, you will understand how to
most effectively take what you know, search for what you don’t
know, and implement the findings into something actionable. The
result is a new and exciting way to solve your biggest problems.

THE THINK BIGGER ROAD MAP

Now that I’ve walked you through the essential characteristics of

innovation, you’re ready for the Think Bigger Road Map: your guide
to our six steps. I will lay out the steps in sequence, but keep in
mind that innovation is never completely linear. You will likely go
back and forth between each step. In every step forward, you will
also look back. Everything stays “in draft,” subject to revision, until
you find your solution.
Figure 1.18 is our road map. For now, don’t worry about the
details within each part. Just note the progression from step to step.

Step 1: Choose the Problem

The start of Think Bigger is choosing the right problem and under-
standing it well. This takes time and good judgment. The problem
must be hard enough that no one has figured it out before but not
so ambitious that the solution remains a fantasy. For example, no
one has invented a pill that cures every disease on earth and costs
only one dollar. Don’t be the first to try. There are multiple ways

30
Figure 1.18 The Think Bigger Road Map.
 PART ONE

to define any problem. Your task is to choose from among them

the one for which you can generate meaningful solutions. You
must choose a worthwhile problem to solve, and that is no easy
feat. Some problems are too big to solve with the current state of
human knowledge, some are too small to make it worth the effort,
and some don’t provoke in you enough desire to persist in finding
a solution. Step 1 of Think Bigger helps you solve this very first
problem: how to choose the right problem to solve.

Step 2: Break It Down

Any major problem is made up of multiple, smaller problems. To

crack the big problem, identify and solve the smaller problems.
Make a long list of subproblems and then pare it down. You end up
with five to seven key subproblems, because that’s about as much
complexity as the human mind can handle at one time.

Step 3: Compare Wants

You now have your problem and its breakdown. Before you start
the search for the elements of a solution, you need to step back
and understand the big picture. In this step, you will identify three
groups and what they want from a solution. These groups are you,
the target of your solution, and third parties who matter for putting
the solution into action. You list the wants from all three, com-
pare them, and then use that analysis to help select from among the
multiple solutions you create. Your “Big Picture” Score will serve as
your selection criteria.

Step 4: Search In and Out of the Box

Each industry, branch of science, or area of expertise has its own

ideas and methods that narrow its thinking. It’s common to hear
that complex problems need multidisciplinary solutions. But when
they try to work together, their ideas and methods clash. Think
Bigger solves the problem. Ford didn’t need an expert at meat

32
 WHAT IS THINK BIGGER?

processing to join his team: he took just one element, the mov-
ing line, as part of his own solution. Think Bigger doesn’t try to
merge disciplines or negotiate across them. It’s non-disciplinary
rather than interdisciplinary. Ask yourself if anyone, anywhere, at
any time, has solved one of your subproblems? If yes, how? Make
a list of these solutions. Like Ford and Johnson, you collect what
works from multiple and disparate sources and even eras—recall
that butter churning and japanning were both very old crafts.

Step 5: Choice Map

Innovators tend to highlight the one solution they put into action.
But the reality is that they tried out different combinations, at least
in their minds, before arriving at the best one. They tend to forget
those previous permutations. Think Bigger brings them to the fore.
You keep moving and turning the pieces around until—eureka!—
the whole emerges. In this step, you will lay out all the pieces of
the puzzle, combine and recombine, until they click into place.
I will give you techniques to create and use multiple combinations
that are both useful and novel, and then use your Big Picture Score
to pick out the one that best fits the multiple wants you need to
balance.

Step 6: The Third Eye

You now have an idea that feels like a flash of insight. But what is it,
exactly? How does it differ from what’s already out there? How will
others see it? In this final step, you take what you have been working
on primarily by yourself—in your own bubble—and go outside to
find out what others “see.” What you'll find is they don’t see it with
their two eyes but with their third one. The third eye is a real phe-
nomenon of working memory where an image forms in their mind.
You’re not asking for their feedback or judgment about the quality
of your idea. Rather, you want to know what they see in your idea
to help you see it better yourself. In so doing, you further develop
your idea and determine if it’s something you truly want to pursue.

33
 PART ONE

THE INNOVATOR WITHIN

At this point you might ask yourself, “Can I do it?”

That is, do you have the mental ability to follow in the footsteps
of Bartholdi, Picasso, Johnson, and Ford? Before you read this chap-
ter, perhaps your answer was “no.” But now I hope you see that the
answer is a resounding “yes.” Each step of Think Bigger is completely
within your grasp. Altogether, the six steps lead you to a big idea.
There is no guarantee, of course, that Think Bigger always works.
You can’t solve every problem in the world. But Think Bigger shows
you how to try. Once you see the process broken down—and under-
stand how even the greatest innovators came up with their new
ideas—I’m certain you will feel confident that you can do it too.

34
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 Benvenuto da Imola, Comentum super Dantis Aldigherii
Comoediam, ed. W. W. Vernon and J. P. Lacaita. Five vols. Florence,
1887.
Croce, B., La poesia di Dante. Bari, 1921. (English translation by
Douglas Ainslie, London, 1922.)
D’Ancona, A., Scritti danteschi. Florence, 1913.
D’Ovidio, F., Studi sulla Divina Commedia (Milan, 1901); Nuovi
studi danteschi (two vols., Milan, 1906-7).
Farinelli, A., Dante in Spagna—Francia—Inghilterra—Germania.
Turin, 1922.
Gardner, E. G., Dante and the Mystics. London, 1913.
Hauvette, H., Études sur la Divine Comédie. Paris, 1922.
Holbrook, R. T., Portraits of Dante from Giotto to Raffael. London,
1911.
Livi, G., Dante suoi primi cultori sua gente in Bologna (Bologna,
1918); Dante e Bologna (Bologna, 1921).
Moore, E., Textual Criticism of the Divina Commedia (Cambridge,
1889); Studies in Dante, four series (Oxford, 1896-1917); Time-
References in the Divina Commedia (Oxford, 1887).
Parodi, E. G., Poesia e storia nella Divina Commedia (Naples,
1921); Il Fiore e il Detto d’Amore (edited in appendix to the Opere di
Dante, Florence, 1922).
Reade, W. H. V., The Moral System of Dante’s Inferno. Oxford,
1909.
Ricci, C., La Divina Commedia illustrata nei luoghi e nelle persone
(Edizione del secentenario della morte di Dante). Milan, 1921.
Rocca, L., Di alcuni commenti della D.C. composti nei primi vent’
anni dopo la morte di Dante. Florence, 1891.
Santangelo, S., Dante e i trovatori provenzali. Catania, 1922.
 Torraca, F., Studi danteschi (Naples, 1912); Nuovi studi danteschi
(Naples, 1921).
Toynbee, P., Dante Studies and Researches (London, 1902);
Dante in English Literature from Chaucer to Cary (two vols., London,
1909); Dante Studies (London, 1921).
Wicksteed, P. H., Dante and Aquinas (London, 1913); From Vita
Nuova to Paradiso, two essays on the vital relations between
Dante’s successive works (Manchester University Press, 1922).
Witte, K., Essays on Dante: selected, translated and edited, with
introduction, notes, and appendices, by C. M. Lawrence and P. H.
Wicksteed. London, 1898.
Besides Boccaccio and Benvenuto da Imola, the modern editions
of the other early commentators, Graziolo de’ Bambaglioli (Udine,
1892), Jacopo della Lana (Bologna, 1866, etc.), the Ottimo (Pisa,
1827-29), Pietro Alighieri (Florence, 1845), Francesco da Buti (Pisa,
1858-62), are worth consulting. Extracts, with notably better texts,
are given by Biagi in La D.C. nella figurazione artistica e nel secolare
commento.
For the question of the Letter of Frate Ilario, see P. Rajna, Testo
della lettera di frate Ilario e osservazioni sul suo valore storico, in
Dante e la Lunigiana (Milan, 1909). On the date of composition of
the Divina Commedia, cf. Parodi, Poesia e storia nella D.C.; Ercole,
Le tre fasi del pensiero politico di Dante, in the Miscellanea dantesca
of the Gior. stor. della lett. ital., and D’Ovidio in the Nuova Antologia,
March, 1923. In addition to the works already cited, published for the
sexcentenary of 1921, may be particularly mentioned the sumptuous
volume Dante e Siena (Siena, 1921), and Dante, la Vita, le Opere, le
grandi città dantesche, Dante e l’Europa (Milan, 1921).
The Giornale Dantesco, the Bullettino della Società Dantesca
Italiana, and Studi danteschi diretti da Michele Barbi (Florence) are
invaluable periodical publications.
Of the numerous English translations of the Divina Commedia,
besides those of Cary and Longfellow, may be mentioned that of C.
E. Norton in prose; Haselfoot and M. B. Anderson in terza rima; G.
Musgrave of the Inferno in Spenserian stanzas, and H. J. Hooper in
amphiambics; C. L. Shadwell of the Purgatorio and Paradiso in the
metre used by Andrew Marvell in his Horatian “Ode to Cromwell.”
The terza rima is a measure not easily adapted to English speech.
First introduced into English by Chaucer, with the modifications
which the difference of our prosody from the Italian requires, in two
fragments of A Compleint to his Lady (Minor Poems vi. in Skeat’s
Student’s Chaucer), it was used by Wyatt and Surrey, by Sir Philip
Sidney and other Elizabethans, and even once by Milton (in his
paraphrase of Psalm ii.). Among the few notable English poems in
terza rima written during the nineteenth century, Shelley’s unfinished
Triumph of Life stands supreme, and in it we may in very truth:

Behold a wonder worthy of the rhyme

Of him who from the lowest depths of hell,

Through every paradise and through all glory,
Love led serene, and who returned to tell

The words of hate and awe; the wondrous story

How all things are transfigured except Love.
 APPENDIX
I. DIAGRAM OF THE UNIVERSE
II. CLOCK OF THE DIVINE COMEDY
III. TABLE OF HELL
IV. TABLE OF PURGATORY
V. TABLE OF PARADISE
VI. THE MYSTIC ROSE OF PARADISE
VII. PRINCIPAL SOVEREIGNS CONTEMPORARY WITH DANTE

I. DIAGRAM OF THE UNIVERSE IN THE DIVINE COMEDY

 A = Jerusalem, crowned by Calvary; B = Italy, and, presumably, the
Dark Wood; C = Centre of Earth; D = Spain, the Western limit of the
inhabited world; E = The Ganges, the Eastern limit; F = Hell; G =
Purgatory, crowned by Eden, H.

II. CLOCK MARKING SIMULTANEOUS HOURS AT

DIFFERENT REGIONS OF THE EARTH
[After Dr. E. Moore’s Time-References in the Divina Commedia.]
 To indicate changes of hour, the reader may imagine the rim of the
clock to revolve counterclockwise, while the five hands remain
stationary, or the hands to revolve clockwise, while the rim remains
stationary.
Thus, for example, Purg. xxvii. 1-5, the sun was rising at
Jerusalem, ‘there where his Maker shed His blood,’ when it was
midnight in Spain (on the Ebro) and noon in India, ‘the waves in
Ganges burnt by noon’; and therefore sunset in Purgatory:
‘wherefore the day was departing, when the Angel of God joyfully
appeared to us.’

III. HELL
 CANTOS
Dark Wood. Leopard, Lion, and Wolf. i.-ii.
Guidance of Virgil.
Gate of Hell. |iii.
Ante-Hell. Pusillanimous and iii.
neutrals, souls and
Angels. St. Celestine v.
(Some place Slothful,
Accidiosi, here.
Acheron. Charon’s boat. iii.
Brink of the Abyss. iv.
Circle I. (Limbo.) Unbaptized Children and Outside iv.
Virtuous Heathen. The ethical
Noble Castle. Homer, scheme of
Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Hell,
Lucan. Electra, Hector, because
Aeneas, Caesar; Camilla, unknown to
Penthesilea, Latinus, Aristotle as
Lavinia; the elder Brutus, sin. Some
Lucretia, Julia, Martia, regard this
Cornelia, The Saladin. circle, with
Aristotle; Socrates, Plato; Ante-Hell, as
Democritus, Diogenes, representing
Anaxagoras, Thales, Negative
Empedocles, Heraclitus, Incontinence.
Zeno, Dioscorides;
Orpheus, Cicero, Linus,
Seneca; Euclid and
Ptolemy; Hippocrates,
Avicenna, Galen;
Averroës.
Circle II. Minos. The Lustful: Incontinence. v.
Semiramis, Dido,
Cleopatra, Helen,
Achilles, Paris, Tristram;
Paolo Malatesta and
Francesca da Polenta.
Circle III. Cerberus. The vi.
Gluttonous: Ciacco of
Florence.
Circle IV. Plutus. Avaricious and vii.
 Prodigal (none
recognisable).
Circle V. (Styx.) The Slothful? Angry and vii.-viii.
Sullen. Phlegyas and his
boat. Filippo Argenti.
Walls of City of Dis. Fiends and Furies. The viii.-ix.
Messenger of Heaven.
Circle VI. Heretics. Epicurus and his Outside ix.-xi.
followers. Farinata degli ethical
Uberti, Cavalcante de’ scheme.
Cavalcanti; Frederick ii, Intermediate
Cardinal Ottaviano degli between
Ubaldini; Pope Incontinence
Anastasius. and
Violence.
Some regard
this Circle as
included in
Bestiality, or
as Negative
Violence.
Precipice. The Minotaur. xii.
Circle VII. (1) In the river Violence or xii.
Phlegethon, the violent Bestiality.
against others, tyrants
and murderers; Alexander
the Great, Dionysius of
Sicily; Ezzelino, Obizzo
da Esti; Guy de Montfort;
Attila, Pyrrhus, Sextus
Pompeius; Rinier da
Corneto, Rinier Pazzo.
Chiron, Nessus, Pholus
and other centaurs.
(2) In the wood of harpies xiii.
and hell-hounds, the
violent against
themselves, suicides and
squanderers; Pier della
Vigna; Lano of Siena,
Giacomo da Santo
 Andrea; a Florentine
suicide.
(3) On the burning sand: xiv.-xvii
—
(a) The violent against
God; Capaneus.
(b) The violent against
Nature; Brunetto Latini;
Priscian, Francesco
d’Accorso, Andrea de’
Mozzi; Guido Guerra,
Tegghiaio Aldobrandi,
Jacopo Rusticucci,
Guglielmo Borsiere.
(c) The violent against Art
(Usurers); unrecognisable
individuals of Gianfigliazzi
and Ubbriachi, and
Rinaldo degli Scrovigni,
expecting Vitaliano del
Dente and Giovanni
Buiamonte.
Great Abyss. Geryon. xvii.
Circle VIII. (Malebolge.) (1) Panders and Fraud, xviii.
Seducers; Venedico Malice.
Caccianemico, Jason.
Horned Devils.
(2) Flatterers; Alessio
Interminei, Thais.
(3) Simoniacs; Nicholas xix.
iii, awaiting Boniface viii
and Clement v.
(4) Soothsayers and xx.
Sorcerers; Amphiaraus,
Tiresias, Aruns, Manto,
Eurypylus, Michael Scot,
Guido Bonatti, Asdente of
Parma.
(5) Barrators; the Elder of xxi.-xxiii.
Lucca, Ciampolo, Frate
Gomita, Michel Zanche.
 Malacoda and the
Malebranche.
(6) Hypocrites; two Frati xxiii.
Godenti of Bologna
(Catalano
(7) Thieves; Vanni Fucci; xxiv.-xxv.
Cacus; Cianfa Donati,
Francesco de’ Cavalcanti,
Agnello Brunelleschi,
Buoso (Donati or degli
Abati), Puccio de’ Galigai.
(8) Evil Counsellors; xxvi.-
Ulysses and Diomed; xxvii.
Guido da Montefeltro.
(9) Sowers of Scandal xxviii.-
and Schism; Mahomet, xxix.
Ali, Pier da Medicina,
Curio, Mosca de’
Lamberti, Bertran de
Born; Geri del Bello.
(10) Falsifiers; Griffolino, xxix-xxx.
Capocchio; Gianni
Schicchi, Myrrha; Adam
of Brescia, one of the
Counts of Romena;
Potiphar’s wife; Sinon.
Well of Giants. Nimrod, Ephialtes, xxxi.
Briareus, Antaeus, Tityus,
Typhon.
Circle IX. (Cocytus.) (1) In Caina; traitors to Treachery, xxxii.-
their kindred; Alessandro Malice. xxxiv.
and Napoleone degli
Alberti, Mordred,
Focaccia, Sassolo
Mascheroni, Camicione
dei Pazzi.
(2) In Antenora; traitors to
country or party; Bocca
degli Abati, Buoso da
Duera, Tesauro
Beccheria, Gianni de’
 Soldanieri, Tebaldello,
Ganelon, Count Ugolino
and Archbishop Ruggieri.
(3) In Tolomea; traitors to
their guests; Alberigo de’
Manfredi, Branca d’Oria.
(4) In Giudecca; traitors to
their benefactors and their
lords; Judas, Brutus,
Cassius.
Centre of the Earth. Lucifer. xxxiv.

IV. PURGATORY

CANTOS
Shore of Island. Cato. Angel of Faith. Negligence i.-ii.
Casella. through
lack of
Foot of Mountain. Contumacious, but iii.
Love.
repentant; Manfred.
Gap where Ascent iv.
begins.
Ante-Purgatory. Penitence deferred through iv.
Indolence; Belacqua.
Violently slain unabsolved; v.-vi.
Jacopo del Cassero,
Buonconte, Pia, Guccio de’
Tarlati, Benincasa,
Federigo Novello, Gano
degli Scornigiani, Orso
degli Alberti, Pierre de la
Brosse.
Sordello. In Valley of vi.-viii.
Princes: Rudolph of
Hapsburg, Ottocar of
Bohemia; Philip iii of
France, Henry i of Navarre;
Peter iii of Aragon, Charles
i of Anjou; Alfonso iii of
Aragon; Henry iii of
England; William of
 Montferrat; Nino Visconti,
Currado Malaspina.
Serpent, and two Angels of
Hope.
Gate of St. Peter. (Dream of Eagle; St. Lucy). ix.
Angel Confessor of
Obedience.
First Terrace. Purgation of Pride. Sins of the x.-xii.
Omberto Aldobrandesco, Spirit, or
Oderisi of Gubbio, Love
Provenzano Salvani. distorted.
[Alighiero i.]
Steps. Angel of Humility. xii.
Second Terrace. Purgation of Envy. Siena, xiii.-xiv.
Guido del Duca, Sapia of
Rinier da Calboli.
Steps. Angel of Fraternal Love. xv.
Third Terrace. Purgation of Anger. Marco xv.-xvii.
Lombardo.
Steps. Angel of Peace or xvii.
Meekness.
Fourth Terrace. (Virgil’s discourse of Love.) Love xvii.-xix.
Purgation of Sloth. Abbot of defective.
San Zeno. (Dream of
Siren.)
Steps. Angel of Zeal (Spiritual xix.
Joy).
Fifth Terrace. Purgation of Avarice and Sins of the xix.-xxii.
Prodigality. Adrian v; Hugh Flesh, or
Capet; Statius (who joins Love
Virgil and Dante). excessive.
Steps. Angel of Justice (cupidity xxii.
being its chief opponent).
Sixth Terrace. Purgation of Gluttony. xxii.-xxiv.
Forese Donati; Bonagiunta
of Lucca; Martin iv; Ubaldo
| della Pila; Archbishop
Boniface of Ravenna;
Messer Marchese of Forlì.
 Steps. Angel of Abstinence. xxiv.-xxv.
(Statius on Generation.
Seventh Terrace. Purgation of Lust. Guido xxv.-xxvi.
Guinizelli, Arnaut Daniel.
Purging Fire. Angel of Purity. xxvii.
Last Steps. Cherubim with flaming xxvii.
sword? (Dream of Leah.)
Earthly Paradise. Matelda. Eden State xxviii.-
Triumph of the Church. of xxxiii.
Beatrice. Innocence
Mystical Tree of the Regained.
Empire.
Lethe and Eunoë.

V. PARADISE

The Angelic Sciences. Virtues. CANTOS

Spheres. Orders.
The Order of i.
the Universe
and the Eternal
Law.
First (Physical Angels Grammar. Deficient ii.-v.
Heaven, of phenomena the (guardians of Fortitude.
the Moon. work of individuals and
Celestial bearers of
Intelligences.) tidings of
Inconstant in God’s bounty).
vows; Piccarda
Donati and
Empress
Constance.
(Freedom of
the Will.)
Second Ambitious Archangels Logic. Imperfect v.-vii.
Heaven, of spirits of the (announce Justice.
Mercury. Active Life; messages of
Justinian and great import
Romeo. (The and protect
Roman Empire nations).
 and the
Mystery of
Redemption.)
Third Purified Lovers; Principalities Rhetoric. Defective viii.-ix.
Heaven, of Carlo Martello, (regulate Temperance.
Venus. Cunizza, Folco, earthly
Rahab. principalities
(Constitution of and draw
Society and princes to rule
bad with love).
government.)
Termination ix.
of Earth’s
Shadow.
Fourth Doctors and Powers Arithmetic. Prudence. x.-xiv.
Heaven, of Teachers. (represent
the Sun. Aquinas, Divine Power
Albertus, and Majesty;
Gratian, Peter combat
Lombard, powers of
Solomon, darkness; stay
Dionysius, diseases).
Orosius,
Boëthius,
Isidore, Bede,
Richard, Siger.
Bonaventura,
Agostino and
Illuminato,
Hugh, Peter
Comestor,
Peter of Spain,
Nathan,
Chrysostom,
Anselm, Aelius
Donatus,
Rabanus,
Joachim. (Work
of SS. Francis
and Dominic;
wisdom of
Solomon; glory
of risen body.)
Fifth Warriors Virtues (imitate Music. Fortitude. xiv.-xviii.
Heaven, of forming Divine
Mars. Crucifix. Strength and
Cacciaguida; Fortitude; work
Joshua, Judas signs; inspire
Maccabaeus, endurance).
Charlemagne,
Orlando,
William of
Orange,
Renoardo,
Godfrey de
Bouillon,
Guiscard.
(Florence;
Dante’s exile
and life-work.)
Sixth Rulers form Dominations Geometry. Justice. xviii.-xx.
Heaven, of Imperial Eagle. (image of
Jupiter. David; Trajan, Divine
Hezekiah, Dominion).
Constantine,
William ii. of
Sicily, Rhipeus.
(Justice, divine
and human.)
Seventh Contemplative Thrones Astrology. Temperance. xxi.-xxii.
Heaven, of spirits; Peter (imitate Divine
Saturn. Damian, Steadfastness;
Benedict, execute God’s
Macarius, judgments;
Romualdus. purify).
(Predestination;
the ascetic life;
God’s
vengeance on
corruption.)
Celestial xxii.
Ladder.
Eighth Triumph of Cherubim Natural Faith Hope, xxiii.-
Heaven, of Christ; (image of Philosophy. and Charity. xxvii.
the Fixed Assumption of Divine
Stars. Mary; Peter, Wisdom;
 James, and spread
John; Adam. knowledge of
(Theological God;
Virtues; St. illuminate).
Peter’s rebuke
of corruption in
Church.)
Ninth The Angelic Seraphim Moral xxvii.-
Heaven, Hierarchies. (image of Philosophy. xxix.
the (Creation as Divine Love;
Crystalline. illustrating the render
Divine Love.) perfect).
Tenth The Essential Divine xxx.-
Heaven, Paradise of Science of xxxiii.
the Angels and Theology.
Empyrean. Saints. (Throne
of Henry vii.)
Bernard.
Blessed of the
Mystic Rose.
Gabriel.
Blessed Virgin
Mary.
Beatific xxxiii.
Vision of
the Divine
Essence.

VI. THE MYSTIC ROSE OF PARADISE

 VII. PRINCIPAL SOVEREIGNS
CONTEMPORARY WITH DANTE
(1265-1321)

POPES
Clement iv, 1265-1268.
[Purg. iii. 125.]
B. Gregory x, 1271-1276.
B. Innocent v, 1276.
Adrian v, 1276.
[Purg. xix. 88-145.]
John xxi, 1276-1277.
[Par. xii. 134.]
Nicholas iii, 1277-1280.
[Inf. xix. 31 et seq.]
Martin iv, 1281-1285.
[Purg. xxiv. 20-24.]
Honorius iv, 1285-1287.
Nicholas iv, 1288-1292.
St. Celestine v, 1294.
[Inf. iii. 59-60; Inf. xxvii. 105.]
Boniface viii, 1294-1303.
 [Inf. xix. 52-57, 76-78; xxvii. 70-111; Purg. viii. 131; xx. 85-
90; xxxii. 153-156; Par. ix. 126; xii. 90; xvii. 50; xxvii. 22; xxx.
148.]
B. Benedict xi, 1303-1304.
[Epist. i. 1. Nowhere else mentioned in Dante’s works,
though some identify him, rather than Boniface, with the
‘defunct high-priest’ of Epist. viii. 10.]
Clement v, 1305-1314.
[Inf. xix. 82-87; Purg. xxxii. 157-160; Par. xvii. 82; xxvii. 58;
xxx. 142-148; Epist. v. 10; vii. 7; viii. 4.]
John xxii, 1316-1334.
[Par. xviii. 130-136; xxvii. 58.]

EMPERORS
Rudolph of Hapsburg, 1273-1291.
[Purg. vi. 103; vii. 94-96; Par. viii. 72; Conv. iv. 3.]
Adolph of Nassau, 1292-1298.
[Conv. iv. 3.]
Albert of Hapsburg, 1298-1308.
[Purg. vi. 97 et seq.; Par. xix. 115; Conv. iv. 3.]
Henry of Luxemburg, Henry vii, 1308-1313.
[Purg. vii. 96; Par. xvii. 82; xxx. 133-138; Epist. v., vi., vii.,
vii.*, vii.**, vii.***]
Louis of Bavaria, 1314-1347.

KINGS OF FRANCE
St. Louis ix, 1226-1270.
 [Not mentioned by Dante; unless, perhaps, indirectly in
Purg. vii. 127-129, and xx. 50.]
Philip iii, 1270-1285.
[Purg. vii. 103-105.]
Philip iv, 1285-1314.
[Inf. xix. 87; Purg. vii. 109-111; xx. 91-93; xxxii. 152; Par.
xix. 120; Epist. viii. 4.]
Louis x, 1314-1316.
Philip v, 1316-1322.

KINGS OF ENGLAND
Henry iii, 1216-1272.
[Purg. vii. 131.]
Edward i, 1272-1307.
[Purg. vii. 132; Par. xix. 122.]
Edward ii, 1307-1327.

KINGS OF NAPLES AND SICILY

Manfred of Suabia, 1258-1266.
[Purg. iii. 103-145; V. E. i. 12.]
Charles i of Anjou, 1266-1282.
[Inf. xix. 99; Purg. vii. 113, 124; xi. 137; xx. 67-69.]
(After the Vespers of Palermo, Sicily under House of Aragon
separated from Angevin Naples.)

KINGS OF NAPLES[42]