Opera as a way of thinking

From and excellent article on IDEO, an industrial design firm, from the May 21 issue of NEWSWEEK:

As Kelley explains it, IDEO’s current mindset is less about product design than it is about, well, fostering new mindsets. Kelley says his company’s mission is to train its clients in “design thinking,” or the ability to think as designers do, deploying similar methods to conjure new lines of business or improve existing ones. “The world seems to be good at coming up with innovations out of a new technology or a new idea in marketing,” says Kelley. “But by trying to understand people, and looking for their nonobvious needs, we find good opportunities to innovate.”

Interesting to think of opera and music theatre in these terms; i.e. looking for the non-obvious needs in peoples' artistic/spiritual lives and then creating for them Opera as a mindset/theatre as a way of thinking.

Full text of the article can be found here.