The MCA is a new post-doc and mid-career qualification, which has been developed as an alternative to traditional MBA programs. Emphasis is put on teaching authentic thinking skills, in addition to the usual management methodologies and heuristics.
New insights and new knowledge is created by allocating novel observations or hypotheses around existing thought-patterns and by subsequently re-configuring and re-combining these thought-patterns in new ways. The repertory of available thought-patterns and the mastery and elegance in choosing and transforming them, define to a large degree, the advanced thinking skills of a person.
The present epoch is characterized by two overarching challenges: rapidly increasing complexity and an ever accelerating pace of structural change, the transition to a knowledge-based economy, in which the generation of new knowledge becomes the core value creation process. At the same time, the “art and craft of thinking” is hardly ever thought as such, neither in school nor university curricula. Hence, there seems to be an urgent need for a complementary qualification that focuses specifically on these issues.
