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Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently |  | Author: Gregory Berns
Publisher: Harvard Business School Press
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
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Seller: berkseller
Rating:  71 reviews
Sales Rank: 159479
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 224
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.2
ISBN: 1422115011
Dewey Decimal Number: 612.8
EAN: 9781422115015
Publication Date: September 29, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
No organization can survive without iconoclasts -- innovators who single-handedly upturn conventional wisdom and manage to achieve what so many others deem impossible.
Though indispensable, true iconoclasts are few and far between. In Iconoclast, neuroscientist Gregory Berns explains why. He explores the constraints the human brain places on innovative thinking, including fear of failure, the urge to conform, and the tendency to interpret sensory information in familiar ways.
Through vivid accounts of successful innovators ranging from glass artist Dale Chihuly to physicist Richard Feynman to country/rock trio the Dixie Chicks, Berns reveals the inner workings of the iconoclast's mind with remarkable clarity. Each engaging chapter goes on to describe practical actions we can each take to understand and unleash our own potential to think differently -- such as seeking out new environments, novel experiences, and first-time acquaintances.
Packed with engaging stories, science-based insights, potent practices, and examples from a startling array of disciplines, this engaging book will help you understand how iconoclasts think and equip you to begin thinking more like an iconoclast yourself.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 71
 WARNING: This Book Will Change Your Brain!!! August 29, 2010
William Dahl (Redmond, OR)
Required reading for the intellectually adventurous. Warning: This book will change you! Here are a few excerpts I adored:
"The definition of an iconoclast as a person who does something that others say can't be done. This definition implies that iconoclasts are different from other people. Indeed, this is true, but more precisely, the, iconoclast's brain is different." P. 6
Berns must have spoken to my wife before he wrote the following:
"the brain runs on about 40 watts of power ( a light bulb!)." p. 7.
"perception is a process that is learned through experience, which is both a curse and an opportunity for change. P. 8
"To see things differently than other people, the most effective solution is to bombard the brain with things it has never encountered before. Novelty releases the perceptual process from the shackles of past experience and forces the brain to make new judgments." P.8.
After having overcome the sheer terror of Berns speaking to my wife before he wrote the above, I am comforted by what he shares thereafter, including these tidbits:
The problem with novelty, however, is that, for most people, novelty triggers the fear system of the brain. P.8.
Fear is the second major impediment to thinking like an iconoclast and stops the average person dead in his tracks. P. 8.
I thought these two (Berns and my wife) got together to conspire to destroy me. Listen to the following from Berns:the word iconoclast, which means literally "destroyer of icons," p. 10.
My wife says she is just trying to move me out of the ruts and routines I seem to fall into. Along with Berns, I guess they have a point, based upon the following:
"The brain must be provided with something that it has never before processed to force it out of predictable perceptions."p.25
"we can say one thing about the iconoclast's brain, it would be this: it sees differently than other people's brains." P.32
Iconoclasm begins with perception. More specifically, it begins with visual perception, and so the first step to thinking like an iconoclast is to see like one. p. 32
"But epiphanies rarely occur in familiar surroundings. The key to seeing like an iconoclast is to look at things that you have never seen before. It seems almost obvious that breakthroughs in perception do not come I from simply staring at an object and thinking harder about it. Break- throughs come from a perceptual system that is confronted with something that it doesn't know how to interpret. Unfamiliarity forces the rain to discard its usual categories of perception and create new one." P. 33
"Imagination comes from the visual system. Iconoclasm goes hand in hand with imagination. Before one can muster the strength to tear down conventional thinking, one must first imagine the possibility that conventional thinking is wrong. But even this is not enough. The iconoclast goes further and imagines alternative possibilities. P.37
"but creativity seems to become more difficult for many people as they get older." P. 37
"we cannot see that which we don't know to look for. Second, the ability to see these subtle differences depends on experience. And this means that perception can be changed through experience." P. 42
"In order to think creatively, and imagine possibilities that only iconoclasts do, one must break out of the cycle of experience-dependent categorization-or what Mark Twain called "education." For most people, this does not come naturally. Often the harder one tries to think differently, the more rigid the categories become. There is a better way, a path that jolts the brain out of preconceived notions of what it is seeing: bombard the brain with new experiences. Only then will it be forced out of efficiency mode and reconfigure its neural networks." P. 54
"It typically takes a novel stimulus - either a new piece of information or getting out of the environment in which an individual has become comfortable-to jolt attentional systems awake and reconfigure both perception and imagination. The more radical and novel the change, the greater the likelihood of new insights being generated. To think like an iconoclast, you need novel experiences." P. 57-58.
OK...OK...I need to change --- I get that. My wife is HUGE on getting me involved in new experiences (painting the house, taking the garbage out, changing up what I read, and inviting me to new and fascinating social engagements(???). CLEARLY, she has conspired with Berns about this as well. Listen to what he writes:
"Categories are death to imagination. So the solution is to seek out environments in which you have no experience." P. 58
"The critical fears that inhibit people from sharing their ideas: the fear of being rejected. At its core, this fear has its origin in social pressure, which is one of the most common of human phobias." Pp.77-78
Individuals who tended toward social reticence felt comfortable pitching half -baked ideas." P. 78.
The soft-minded man always fears change. He feels security in the status quo, and he has an almost morbid fear of the new. For him, the greatest pain is the pain of a new idea. - Martin Luther King Jr. p.83.
"We know what we see, and we know right from wrong, but with enough social pressure, we cave in to the fear of standing alone. --- If we grant that we are all a bit reticent at times to stand up for our personal opinions, this leaves the door open to act as individuals when we choose. It is a noble grasp for free will. But-and this is the kicker-we must be brave enough. This was Asch's point. Even in a neutral laboratory setting, most people are not that brave." P. 92
"Groups are, indeed, superior to individuals, but only when they are diverse and individuals act as individuals. Statistically, most people in a group will lie along a spectrum of opinions, but because of the social pressure to belong, these opinions contract to the social norm. The availability of a minority position breaks the stranglehold of conformity, and groups that allow for minority opinions are statistically more likely to make better decisions than groups that require unanimity." P.103.
It an institutional level, the implications are clear: committees should not be required to arrive at a unanimous decision. Dissension must be encouraged." Pp.104-104
"The most effective way for a group to make a decision is by aggregating the opinions of independent individuals. Lt also follows that a group with a lot of diversity among its members is more likely to arrive at a good decision than a group that is composed of members who are alike." P.104.
"The human brain comes to like that with which it is familiar. And it is this sort of familiarity that the successful iconoclast must strive for. Rightly or wrongly, people put their money into things that they are familiar with." P. 141.
Yes, I have been referred to as "soft-minded and lazy" by family members.They have been attempting to rewire me since birth. Oncegain, Berns and my wife have been conspiring here. Listen to Berns:
"The brain is lazy. It changes only when it has to. And the conditions that consistently force the brain to rewire itself are when it confronts something novel. Novelty equals learning, and learning means physical rewiring of the brain." P. 199.
Berns is a boundary buster...he is on the frontier of breakthroughs in how we think and ways in which we might become more (much more) than we believe we are capable of becoming.
REQUIRED READING!!!
 A smokescreen for working to death for no reason August 17, 2010
Robert L. Hudson (Sparks, MD USA)
Chances are you're not that rare individual, or if you are, hopefully you're smart enough to realize that it's time to stop taking on impossible tasks out of good sense instead of out of some hubristic thinking.
Countless managers spend their lives using texts like these to inspire employees to do things that aren't reasonable under the presumption that heroic effort (despite the constraints of reality) can overcome any obstacle, no matter how ridiculous the effort is.
How To Insult An Iconoclast August 11, 2010
Barry Linetsky (Ontario, Canada)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is clearly the worst business book I've ever read from a respectable business publisher. Turns out Berns argues as if he is a determinist who doesn't believe man has free-will. As such, while the cover informs us that "a neuroscientist reveals how to think differently," the neuroscientist himself informs us that iconoclasts are born, not made.
His argument is simplistic and circular in its reasoning, and is as follows:
Premise 1: Those who do things that others say can't be done are iconoclasts
Premise 2: The brains of iconoclasts are different from the brains of non-iconoclasts
Premise 3: Only those born with iconoclastic brains can be iconoclasts
Conclusion: Only iconoclasts can do things that others say can't be done.
Berns writes that "It seems obvious that there should be something different in the brains of [iconoclasts], but because these individuals are rare, it is difficult to pin down what these differences might be" (p. 119). The focus for Berns is on brains, not thinking, which is the result of his biological determinism. Furthermore, he provides no evidence in the book that he has ever studied the brain or the thinking processes of a single iconoclast, or ever interviewed one, so there is no scientific, or even anecdotal evidence to support his deterministic viewpoint. To put it bluntly, he's making the whole thing up through deduction from arbitrary premises, supported with weak to non-existent evidence that sorely fails to support his arbitrary assertion that the brains of iconoclasts are different.
Don't bother to read this book. I read it hoping to gain some insight into the minds of those Berns identifies as iconoclasts, people like Walt Disney and Richard Branson, Ray Kroc, and Warren Buffet. Berns provides this: iconoclasts perceive things differently, they manage their fears, and they pitch their ideas to the masses. How do they do it? They have iconoclastic brains, that's how. If you don't have one, you can't do it. That's why for Berns there is nothing to learn about the principles of thinking or the skill-sets needed that will help you to think differently and succeed in your business endeavours. Berns' conclusion is that thinking can't help you because thinking is an illusion - that it's your brain that does the thinking for you, not you that does the thinking with your brain.
Those geniuses who are identified by Berns as iconoclasts should feel insulted, not honoured, by Berns book. To Berns they are not men and women of genius who should be celebrated for dedicating their lives to learning and thinking and creating to solve the mysteries of the universe and improve the well-being of mankind through the creation of heretofore unknown value, but rather are merely human biological anomalies.
ICONOCLASTS: V not equal to R April 11, 2010
Ronald C. Stern (Madrid, Madrid Spain)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
ICONOCLASTS
In this, not only fantastic, but extremely useful book, Gregory Berns tells us - on a scientific basis - many things who can help us avoid to fall into important mental traps, where our brain works against us. Especially as an Entrepreneur. Why people who hold the most relevant responsibilities on the World, take sometimes so stupid decisions? - Take the sad example of the late President of Poland, Lech Kaczynsky, killed the 10th of April 2010 together with almost the whole political and military elite of Poland in an airplane crash. It seems that it was the same Polish President Lech Kaczynski, who ordered the pilot of the plane that carried him to Georgia in 2008 to land in Tbilisi, against air traffic controllers and despite their warnings, using his power of command as the President of the Country. Power can stop the brain. And it stops more brains than we think.
Also a high level of welfare stops the brain working. The evolution of our brain is a result of adversity. Adversity fostered the "Homo Sapiens". Evolution can be the result of challenges, or the lack of them. The "evolutionary" process of the tapeworm shows it: its brain became always smaller and smaller. Why? - surrounding temperature was always ideal, food supply was abundant, and there were no enemies to fight against. For what the hell the tapeworm needed a brain for? - So its head is terribly small in relation with his body.
The same happens with part of our economic system, the postmodern "capitalism without capital" (let others pay for the risk, and you get the profit). Here we find the remains of our primitive brain and the consequences that any human group, from the family to the company, to the country and the world: there are always three groups: 1)The Entrepreneurs, 2) The Co-workers and 3) The Parasites.
So, making that democratic capitalism works again, means to stop favoring any kind of parasites and giving not favorable but fair treatment for those who really invest effort into their enterprise and offer real value propositions for their customers and for society. Will that be sufficient for being an Entrepreneur? - No, because you will have to avoid falling into the trap of "status quo", because the formula for life, business and everything is V not equal to R which means that vision, perception and reality NEVER COINCIDE. (versus the"success-formula", the dangerous status-quo-trap is V=R.) No-coincidence between VISION (V) and REALITY (R) is the source of all OPPORTUNITIES and future-shaping thinkers! - So it is very important to learn how our brain works.
The brain is one of the most energy consuming organs of the human body. And, as energy always has been a scarce resource, our brain is programmed to maximize its energy-efficiency. So, unfortunately, our brain is "lazy" and - moreover - works mainly "backwards" instead of thinking ahead. It is lazy, because it is trimmed to work on "status quo" patterns, in order to be energy-efficient and to by-pass itself as soon as a "déjà-vu" pattern is recognized by the brain, giving the immediate order of: "stop working, we already know this". As Berns defines learning as "a physical re-wiring of the brain, he confirms the old saying of Arthur Schopenhauer: "Humans only learn, when it hurts".
Berns says that "re-programming perception and imagination is possible, but not under "Business-as-usual" conditions. You need getting out of the environment in which an individual has become comfortable. The more radical and novel the change, the greater the likelihood of new insights being generated. To think like an iconoclast, you need novel experiences.
You need to confront the perceptual system with people, places and things it hasn't seen before (new categories).
CATEGORIES ARE DEATH TO IMAGINATION."
So you need to do 3 things:
1. Re-program the vision-perception-imagination loop,
2. Tame the stress-response in order to make fear productive,
3. Train and structure adequately your social intelligence.
A really marvelous book! - You should buy it! Ronald C. Stern
ronald_stern@sternconsultants.com
Useful March 23, 2010
Joseph Valentine Dworak (Minneapolis, MN)
This book does a really solid job of analyzing how Iconoclastic leaders make change happen. The most helpful illustration for me was the comparing and contrasting of Picasso and Van Gogh. Why did one artist die worth 750 million dollars, and the other, penniless? The good thing about this book it also studies success, and by doing that offers the average reader insights on how to bring about change through a new idea.
There is also lots of information about how the brain works, how personality might develop and more. I found this to be a worthwhile read. JVD
Showing reviews 1-5 of 71
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