Learners become better at applying their knowledge to a situation they’ve never seen before, which is the essence of creativity.

Dunbar witnessed important breakthroughs live, and saw that the labs most likely to turn unexpected findings into new knowledge for humanity made a lot of analogies, and made them from a variety of base domains. The labs in which scientists had more diverse professional backgrounds were the ones where more and more varied analogies were offered,

The Van Gogh biography by Steven Naifeh and his late partner and coauthor Gregory White Smith is one of the best books I have ever read in any genre.

“variety of base domains,” which foster analogical thinking and conceptual connections that can help students categorize the type of problem they are facing.

Moravec’s paradox: machines and humans frequently have opposite strengths and weaknesses.

When experienced accountants were asked in a study to use a new tax law for deductions that replaced a previous one, they did worse than novices. Erik Dane, a Rice University professor who studies organizational behavior, calls this phenomenon “cognitive entrenchment.”

an effective problem-solving culture was one that balanced standard practice—whatever it happened to be—with forces that pushed in the opposite direction.

Interleaving has been shown to improve inductive reasoning. When presented with different examples mixed together, students learn to create abstract generalizations that allow them to apply what they learned to material they have never encountered before. For example, say you plan to visit a museum and want to be able to identify the artist

Bingham calls it “outside-in” thinking: finding solutions in experiences far outside of focused training for the problem itself. History is littered with world-changing examples.