blue sky thinking

creative, visionary thinking without immediate practical application

TRANSLATION

blue sky thinking = befreites Denken, grenzenloses Phantasieren --- GOOGLE INDEX blue sky thinking: approximately 500,000 Google hits

STATISTICS

IN THE PRESS

Science Minister David Willetts says funding is not for a "sausage factory" of inventions but for "BLUE SKY THINKING."

(BBC News)

*Dear subscribers: We're not sure what Minister Willets meant by a "sausage factory" of inventions, but it was too amusing not to include it.

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Mr Sullivan says the only time he gets for BLUE SKY THINKING is when he is in the sky. "Chief executives will rue the day when BlackBerrys work on planes," he predicts.

(The Economist magazine)

Did you
know?

blue sky thinking

- creative ideas that are not limited by current thinking or beliefs

(Collins English Dictionary)

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The expression blue sky thinking stems from the idea of opening up one's mind "as wide as the blue sky" while rolling an idea around in one's head. London's Guardian newspaper lists 10 blue sky ideas that changed the course of history:

- Plato's Philosophy
- Theory of the Universe (Copernicus, Galileo)
- Cartesian Cogito (Descartes' "cogito, ergo sum" or "I think, therefore I am")
- Newton's Universal Gravitation Theory
- Adam Smith's Laissez-Faire Economics
- Women's Liberation
- Marx's Analysis of Capitalism
- Freud's Theory of the Unconscious
- Einstein's Theory of Relativity
- World Wide Web

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SYNONYMS

opened-minded thinking, brainstorming, dream up, ponder, thinking outside the box

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