We often hear stories of outsiders who seem to come from nowhere to revolutionize a field and that does happen, but the starting point for any breakthrough is always a deep well of expertise. You have to understand the problems of a particular domain before you can begin to solve them and recognize a truly novel solution. Healthy Skepticism A brilliant detective story about the sources of human creativity. I loved it. * Malcolm Gladwell * When Jim Allison received a call from Dr. Jedd Wolchok, asking him to come to his office, he was puzzled at first. As a researcher, he rarely ventured into the clinical part of the hospital. Yet when he opened the door and saw his colleague sitting with a young woman whose emotion was clearly marked on her face, he immediately understood and tears began to fill his eyes.

Anatomy of a Breakthrough: How to Get Unstuck When It Matters Anatomy of a Breakthrough: How to Get Unstuck When It Matters

Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life...And Maybe the World by William McRaven (2017) I was impressed with this book from the beginning to end. Alter's writing style is easy to understand. Readers will find many stories, situations and examples on how to "breakthrough" tough spots in life, jobs, creativity, and so much more. Prepped by a vaccine, immune reinforcements will be marshaled to the fore much faster—within days of an invasion, sometimes much less. Adaptive cells called B cells, which produce antibodies, and T cells, which kill virus-infected cells, will have had time to study the pathogen’s features, and sharpen their weapons against it. While the guard dogs are pouncing, archers trained to recognize the virus will be shooting it down; the few microbes that make their way deeper inside will be gutted by sword-wielding assassins lurking in the shadows. “Each stage it has to get past takes a bigger chunk out” of the virus, Bhattacharya said. Even if a couple particles eke past every hurdle, their ranks are fewer, weaker, and less damaging. The amount of research he did to write this book is also followed up at the end for further reading.Alter was recently included in the Poets and Quants “40 Most Outstanding Business School Professors under 40 in the World,” and has written for the New York Times, New Yorker, Wired, Washington Post, and The Atlantic, among other publications. He has shared his ideas at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity and with dozens of companies around the world.

Anatomy of a Breakthrough | Book by Adam Alter | Official

Yet it is just as clear, as Allison is happy to point out, that he didn’t do it alone. Many prominent researchers contributed to our understanding of immune regulation. It was a team of French researchers that discovered CTLA-4. Sarah Townsend showed that the immune system can fight cancer. Jedd Wolchok and his team recruited patients and performed clinical trials. In art, music, writing, and business, the holy grail is an original idea—something revolutionary that no one’s considered before. The problem with ideas that appear revolutionary is that they’re almost never truly original. Instead, they’re what’s known as recombinations—the marriage of two old ideas to form something evolutionarily different. “When striving for new ideas, do as Dylan did by taking two or more good but disparate concepts, and seeing if you can merge them to form a novel recombination.” Allison’s new discovery got him thinking. His colleague, Sarah Townsend, had done some studies which showed that the B-7 molecule inhibits the growth of tumors, so it certainly seemed that our immune systems have to power to fight cancer. Nevertheless, all previous attempts to do so had failed. Once again, he was presented with a mystery to figure out. In Zen terms, do what Messi and Agassi do: slow down now to make progress later. 4. Think like a curious child by adopting an experimental mindset.If anything, he thought, CTLA-4 wasn’t a gas pedal, but a brake. So, just as he always had, Allison returned to his lab to figure things out and his research confirmed his suspicions. CTLA-4 didn’t stimulate the immune response, but shut it down.

Anatomy of a Breakthrough : How to Get Unstuck When It Anatomy of a Breakthrough : How to Get Unstuck When It

A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace (2009) Adam Alter is a professor of marketing and psychology at NYU’s Stern School of Business, and the New York Times bestselling author of Irresistible and Drunk Tank Pink. Books, Comics and Novels Public Administration Political Theory International Relations IGNOU IGNOU Solution For MPS-001 Join us for a conversation between NYU Stern professor Scott Galloway and bestselling author Adam Alter, where they’ll discuss: If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.