It’s not as complicated as it seems. The only thing we have to give up is a sense of efficiency. As is the case with so many tactics for breakthrough thinking, we have to be willing to indulge irresponsibility to think beyond the box.

Marcus Hollinger is a modern day renaissance man. While he’s got a steady gig as CMO of Reach Records, he also just started an incredible coffee company on the side. Far from sapping him of creative energy, the side-hustle fuels fresh thinking.

Linus Pauling, the only person in history to win two individual Nobel Prizes, succinctly describes the essence of productive creativity: “The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.” Sounds simple enough. But just how many is “lots”?

A theme has emerged in my studies of breakthrough thinkers: the role that parents play in shaping aspirations. Breakthrough parents not only plant bold dreams in their kids’ hearts, but they also prove willing to make the sacrifices necessary to realize those dreams.

"Dr. Smithies was meticulous about his work… the only exceptions were what he called his Saturday morning experiments. 'On Saturday mornings, you can do whatever you want.' He felt free to doodle, like a child with finger paints, to have fun and to free his imagination…”

A former student, now longtime friend, recommended “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”: Adventures of a Curious Character. What a fun read! It's the most un-scientific book I've ever read by a Nobel Prize-winning physicist (the only other being Einstein's attempt at a layman's description of general relativity, which went over my head completely 😜)…

I'm a practice nerd.

I saw Michael Phelps give a talk at a business conference, and remember him saying he didn't take a single day off for something like five years. Not a holiday, not a weekend, nothing. Practice every day.

I watched an excellent documentary about Dirk Nowitzki, and one of the things that struck me was several professional players' comments about Kobe Bryant. The Lakers would arrive in a new town, and the team would hit up the night life. All but Kobe. They all knew: Kobe was in the gym, practicing…

There's incredible power in pairs. Lennon had McCartney. Anthony had Stanton. Hewlett had Packard. Crick had Watson. So did Holmes. The power of a dynamic duo is that they not only complement, but amplify one another's contributions…

Do you know Claude Shannon? He conceived a little thing called the "bit" (which is also called a "shannon," in his honor) - yeah, that kind of bit. One expert, when pressed to describe his influence on the information age, said, “It’s like saying how much influence the inventor of the alphabet has had on literature." I've been blown away to discover how far ahead of his time he was, and just how unique not only his contributions, but also his methods, were. At just twenty-two years old, he wrote a twenty-five page paper that "would ultimately become known as the most influential master's thesis in history."…

In honor of launching the eleventh batch of d.leaders into their diverse and varied partner organizations in our flagship course, "Leading Disruptive Innovation," I wanted to make a short case for the value of an outsiders' perspective. If you have the time for "the long case," pick yourself a copy of Dave Epstein's exceptional, "Range," which does the job very nicely…

"The secret to doing good (work) is always to be a little underemployed. You waste years by not being able to waste hours."

-Amos Tversky, would-be winner of the Nobel Prize, father of behavioral psychology

To me, the unspoken key to Tversky's sentiment is knowing when to "waste" hours; certainly, not all wasted time is created equal. Sometimes folks dawdle when they should be working. But a deliberate diversion, strategically employed, becomes something much more than a waste: it can usher in a breakthrough. Einstein had his violin. Edison had his naps. Franklin had his Junto. Watson and Crick had their coffee. Tversky and Kahneman had their joke-filled-walks…

I was struck by a revealing criticism in Henri Poincaré’s otherwise glowing recommendation of Albert Einstein for an academic position in Zurich. It spoke to me of how subtly a conventional paradigm can sneak into our thinking about exploration…