ALIEN Thinking: The Unconventional Path to Breakthrough Ideas

How do people come up with truly original ideas? The answer is to think outside the box—way outside.

For the past decade, Cyril Bouquet, Jean-Louis Barsoux, and Michael Wade, professors of innovation and strategy at IMD Business School, have studied inventors, scientists, doctors, entrepreneurs, and artists. These people, or “aliens,” as the authors call them, are able to make leaps of creativity, and use five patterns of thinking that distinguish them from the rest of us.

These five patter...