In his article "Rewiring the Creative Mind" (Fast Company, October 08) Gregory Berns defines an iconoclast as a class of people who see things differently and do something that others say can't be done.
Entire books have been written about learning, but the important elements for creative thinkers can be boiled down to this: Experience modifies the connections between neurons so that they become more efficient at processing information.
In order to think creatively, you must develop new neural pathways and break out of the cycle of experience-dependent categorization.
Fortunately, the networks that govern both perception and imagination can be reprogrammed. By deploying your attention differently, the frontal cortex, which contains rules for decision making, can reconfigure neural networks so that you can see things that you didn't see before. You need a novel stimulus -- either a new piece of information or an unfamiliar environment -- to jolt attentional systems awake. The more radical the change, the greater the likelihood of fresh insights.
The surest way to provoke the imagination, then, is to seek out environments you have no experience with.
