The more central the belief is to our thinking, the harder it is to give up. These core beliefs anchor our understanding. We use them to make sense of events, to inquire, and to arrive at judgments about other ideas. And so we are much more likely to explain away any anomalies rather than revise our beliefs in the face of them.

I still observe executives exhibiting the same lack of courage or knowledge that undercut previous waves of innovation. They declare that they want more innovation but then ask, ‘Who else is doing it?’ They claim to seek new ideas but shoot down every one brought to them.

We can increase insights by exposing ourselves to lots of different ideas that might help us form new connections.

Martin Chalfie is a perfect example of the experience most people have of “connecting the dots” and solving a problem by being exposed to more ideas. Like Chalfie, we get a new piece of information that combines with other information we already have, and, presto, we make a discovery.

Insights change our desires; the new stories shift our goals, leading us to give up some ambitions and pursue others.

To quote Mark Twain, “You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

On November 9, 1989, while CIA experts on Soviet and East German politics were briefing President George H. W. Bush on why the Berlin Wall was not likely to come down any time soon, a National Security Council staff member politely entered the Oval Office and urged the president to turn on his television set – to see both East and West Germans battering away at the Wall.

Curiosities provoke people to investigate further, just as coincidences do. The initial “What’s going on here?” reaction doesn’t contain the insight, but it starts the person on the road to gaining the insight.

Intuition is the use of patterns they’ve already learned, whereas insight is the discovery of new patterns.

When we put too much energy into eliminating mistakes, we’re less likely to gain insights. Having insights is a different matter from preventing mistakes.