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Most people define 'genius' as a person with a towering IQ; but the author argues that a genius is "anyone who turns insight into innovation, and in the process, changes our view of the world." He provides 10 time-tested principles to ignite an endless cycle of creative growth, including 'Feel before you think', 'See what's not there' and 'wish for what you want'. In the end, he shows that true innovation is an act of protest: a rebellion against rules that, in some cases, have hardened into laws. The job of the innovator, he says, is to defy those laws in the quest for creative solutions.

Imagination is what enables people to invent new business models, create differentiated products and services, and reframe a growing number of problems as opportunities. And yet we understand very little about how imagination works. The author shows that it has much in common with dreaming. He describes the key elements of the dream state and shows that the the number-one hazard for innovators is getting stuck in the 'tar pits' of prior knowledge. Once we learn the 'trick' of dreaming-of disassociating our thoughts from the linear and the logical-we can become wellsprings of originality.

Design contains the skills to identify possible futures, build bridges to customers and crack 'wicked problems'. For businesses to bottle the kind of experiences that rivet minds and run away with hearts, they need to do more than hire designers: they need to be designers -- to think like designers and work like designers. The narrow-gauge mindset of the past is insufficient for today's wicked problems. We can no longer play the music as written. Instead, we have to invent a whole new scale.