Welcome to the Hunch Room

When was the last time you had a hunch? That inkling of an idea, a sneaking suspicion about the future. That sudden thought that pops into your mind, or that one you’ve been turning over and over — the one that begins with, “I wonder if…’ “I have a feeling that…” or “I’m noticing that…”

Having a good hunch is a pretty good feeling. But sharing a hunch and seeing it grow can be even more rewarding. Once freed, your hunches can spark new insights, colliding with the hunches of others to evolve into something new. Our inklings can lead us all to the next big idea.

Author and media theorist Steven Johnson describes how exchanging hunches and combining them with others to turn them into something new is exactly how good ideas are formed. He points to examples like the coffee houses during the age of enlightenment and the salons in Paris that fueled modernism as spaces where hunches were shared and built upon.

Setting your hunch free might be the best way it can grow into something bigger and make a difference. That’s why we created www.shareyourhunch.org. The name says it all; it’s a space where anyone, anywhere can share their hunches and others can turn them into an infinite number of ideas. What do you see? What patterns or signals do you observe in the hunches? What hunches spark ideas for you about how to build a Culture of Health in your work?

In addition to spreading hunches far and wide and hosting an occasional virtual slow hunch jam, we’ll be pulling a hunch or two off the site and sharing reflections and insights here for readers to consider in what we’re calling “the hunch room.” Simply put, it’s a space to just stop, read a few paragraphs and go, “hmmm.” And who knows, maybe the hunches you find here will collide with a hunch of your own to form something even bigger.

For starters, consider this hunch from Eli Pariser:

Proximity, not discourse….hmmm.

Welcome to the Hunch Room. What’s your hunch?