That whole phenomenon strikes me as a fundamental dimension of reality and perception (sorry for the bombast). We basically see the world as a texture of possi

That whole phenomenon strikes me as a fundamental dimension of reality and perception (sorry for the bombast). We basically see the world as a texture of possibilities, and there are different poles in the way that works. Some people are rigidly conforming or conservative, and they perceive the "possibility vectors" as mostly low in magnitude and pointing in the normal way. Some people are "lateral thinkers" compared to the status quo and see weird opportunities all around them. If they play the piano they'll always be looking to jazz it up in more and more crazy ways. Some people would have a lateral perception but a conservative morality; like, they would have some deep gut level understanding of queerness but react in conservative ways out of fear or repulsion. I suppose that real innovation probably isn't that much due to lateral imaginative personality, but more due to having immersive knowledge enough that you just see way ahead, plus confidence and close-knit support from conspirators. Steve Jobs still has the best quote on this that I know. Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really DO it, they just SAW something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they've had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people. Unfortunately, that's too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven't had very diverse experiences. So they don't have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one's understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.