Blink of an Idea

How do we know what we know? Malcom Gladwell's engaging new book, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, sheds new light on the process of decision-making and reinforces why this "accidental guru," as dubbed by the magazine Fast Track, has rapidly risen to the position of the newest darling of the speaking circuit. The appeal of this journalist-storyteller is in his ability to interlink ordinary experiences with cutting-edge advances in neuroscience and psychology. His passion for research is contagious.

In his first, bestselling book, The Tipping Point, Gladwell demonstrated how an unknown product or idea can reach critical mass. Blink is about how to develop our instincts for better decision-making by relying on our "adaptive unconscious." Like sage Peter Drucker, this accidental business guru is a practical thinker and journalistic observer. His goal is to get people to stop, think and ask questions about how they make decisions in and out of business.

"We talk endlessly about what it means to think about a problem, deliberative thinking and rational thinking," Gladwell writes. "But we spend very little time talking about this other kind of thinking, which is happening in a split second and which is having a huge impact on real-world situations."

Look for some of the phrases Gladwell intersperses throughout the book to become part of mainstream vocabulary: "rapid cognition," "thin-slicing," "the Warren Harding error" and "momentary autism."

First impressions influence our decision-making for both good and bad, he notes, and our instincts can be thrown off-kilter. Gladwell illuminates this "dark side of blink" with accounts of unusual Pentagon war-game results, bad emergency-room judgments and police work gone awry.