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| Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently | 
 enlarge | Author: Gregory Berns
Publisher: Harvard Business School Press
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (40 reviews)
Sales Rank: 6823
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.2
ISBN: 1422115011
Dewey Decimal Number: 612.8
EAN: 9781422115015
ASIN: 1422115011
Publication Date: September 29, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Amygdala, hypothalamus, fusiform . . . ho! December 9, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
When a friend who saw me with this book asked how it was, my response was "it's a slow read. Eventually he does get to the point, I think." For someone interested in the byzantine twists and turns of the human brain, all the discussion of neuroscience is probably of interest. The value of this book as a practical guide for business people (which it purports to be, I think) is questionable. Knowing that the fear response originates in the amygdala doesn't really tell you very much about how to overcome the fears that inhibit us and keep us from taking risks. The examples of iconoclasts cited, such as the private space flight pioneers, or Steve Jobs of Apple, are apt, but don't provide very much in the way of practical guidance. Perhaps just understanding these mechanisms is helpful, but I found myself wishing for less description of brain function and more application to the real world.
The book ends with a strange twist -- an "Iconoclast's Pharmacopeia" that details the chemical mechanisms and behavioral effects of a variety of drugs. It seems at times like you're listening to a buttoned down Timothy Leary telling you -- scientifically, of course -- to give magic mushrooms a try in order to be more innovative. I expect something more than this out of Harvard Business Press.
 How to change your mind to see and do things others say can't be done... December 9, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
It's easy to look at the movers and shakers of society and wonder how they do it... How does a Steve Jobs guide Apple to deliver products like the iPod and iPhone? How was Walt Disney able to create an entire entertainment empire centered around cartoons? Gregory Burns goes beyond the press releases and "official history" on how these people tick in his book Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently. I was surprised at how much of what they do can be explained via the science of neurology, and how you can change your own thought patterns and reactions to move in that direction.
Contents:
Doing What Can't Be Done: Howard Armstrong
Through the Eye of an Iconoclast: Dale Chihuly, Paul Lauterbur, Nolan Bushnell
From Perception to Imagination: Walt Disney, Florence Nightingale, Branch Rickey, Kary Mullis
Fear - The Inhibitor of Action: Jackie Robinson, Dixie Chicks, Computer Associates, Rite-Solutions
How Fear Distorts Perception: NASA, Richard Feynman, Solomon Asch, Martin Luther King Jr.
Why the Fear of Failure Makes People Risk Averse: David Dreman, Bill Miller, Henry Ford
Brain Circuits for Social Networking: Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, Stanley Milgram, Ray Kroc, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linus Torvalds, Warren Buffett
Private Spaceflight - A Case Study of Iconoclasts Working Together: Burt Rutan, Richard Branson, Peter Diamandis, Rich Homans
When Iconoclast Becomes Icon: Arthur Jones, Jonas Salk, Steve Jobs
The Iconoclast's Pharmacopeia
Notes; Index; About the Author
Burns comes at his iconoclast premise by stating there are three brainblocks to prevent a person from standing out in a group. Flawed perception is when you see things so often and in the same way that your brain starts to make baseline assumptions that may not be accurate any more. Fear of failure is just that... Too many people would rather not try than risk the potential negative outcome. And finally, if you can't convince others to see things the way you do, then you won't be able to turn the tide of conventional thinking to new possibilities. Where this book shines is that Burns backs up his research and findings with concrete examples of people who have indeed become iconoclasts in their fields, people who do things that others think are impossible. While I found all the material very applicable to my own situation, I especially identified with the first premise on perception. I find myself doing the same things in the same ways far too often, and as such I cut myself off from seeing the reality of the situation. I need to throw out my assumptions, look at all the areas of my life from a different angle, and see what jumps out as "no longer the case"...
This is definitely a book that was more practical than I expected, and it will free me up to take a few more chances. In fact, it already has in some areas...
Casting Icons Hither and Yon December 8, 2008
This book caught my eye because I thought an iconoclast was someone who shunned icons, religious or otherwise.
Even after reading the book, I was confused about the meaning, so I looked up the definition of 'iconoclast' in several places. They distill down to:
1. destroyer of images, esp. for religious veneration. An enemy of idol worship.
2. a person who attacks beliefs and/or seeks to overthrow tradition or pop ideas and institutions for being based on error and/or superstition. One who exposes/destroys shams and hoaxes.
Yep. That's what I thought.
But what author Gregory Berns says is different. Granted, he explains that "iconoclasts perceive things differently" than most people and gives us physiological reasons for it. An iconoclast, says Berns, is likely to do what everyone else says can't be done* and profiles examples of a number of successful iconoclasts. People who defy the expected.
Berns' Iconoclast can best be described as a book-version of a big interesting Discover Channel program. It's fascinating, instructional, and mixes science with human interest in just the right amounts.
I like his positive spin on the iconoclastic nature - after all, I was nicknamed "Mommy's little iconoclast" around age three. (I had a big problem with that Santa Claus stuff -- my brilliant mother finally told me that yes, most adults really do believe in the big red elf, so we'd better pretend we did too, just to humor them.) Berns' take is similar. He's not going to tie me to a stake and burn me. I like his book.
He says that creativity goes with the iconoclastic nature. That may be true, but it also goes with the nature of ADD. So does the contrariness and most of the other traits he describes. I'm ADD, diagnosed years ago. Sometimes I use Ritalin if I have to sit still for an hour and really shouldn't interrupt a lecture or wedding or something. The definition of ADD includes most everything spoken of in Berns' book. They're connected, kissing cousins, if not different words for the same thing.
Boiling down my impressions to a few words, they would be 1. skeptical thinker and 2. lateral thinker. A few others would include bird-flipper, creative, off-the-wall, easily irritated, and incredibly annoying. Procrastinator may fit into the iconoclast mold as well -- I don't recall if that was mentioned.
The point is, this is an interesting and very accessible read without ever going simplistic. Berns' positive spin in Iconoclast is a great thing, just like authors like Thom Hartmann show the positive side of ADD. They should meet. I think they'd have lots to talk about.
Want to think like an iconoclast? Rather than try, as Berns' suggests, to find something new to look at (that can be difficult), try looking at something old in new ways. It's a great game, one that kept me awake in school when nothing else would. Look at something. A coat hanger, for instance. Now: try to think of all the things you could use it for besides hanging up clothing. Call it The McGuyver Game and get the kids to play. It'll wake up a lot of bored brain cells.
*The challenge to do what can't be done is irresistible to the creatively rebellious type. It's a great button-pusher, too.
A neuroscientist discusses ideas and how biology plays a role December 6, 2008
After describing the iconoclast, Berns provides numerous examples of who he considers to meet this description, and along the way provides a high-level look into how he thinks the human brain enables this trait. It is important for the reader to note that the subtitle is a bit of a misnomer in the sense that the content of the book does not really describe how to be an iconoclast. A large portion of what Berns discusses is interesting material for readers who are new to this subject matter, although sometimes the material gets a bit off course. The author explains that an iconoclast is simply "a person who does something that others say can't be done". The aspect of this book which brings some substance to the content is the fact that the author is a neuroscientist, enabling Berns to add to this simple definition by writing that "the iconoclast's brain is different...iconoclasts perceive things differently than other people", and he elaborates by noting that "the difference in perception plays out in the initial stages of an idea...it plays out in how they manage their fears, and it manifests in how they pitch their ideas to the masses of noniconoclasts...it is an exceedingly rare individual who possesses all three of these traits". There exist three functions of the iconoclast brain that are different than others, each of which are associated with different circuits in the brain: perception, fear response, and social intelligence. The author provides a well-written defense of this stance, and along the way explains that "although the key process for iconoclasm is perception, this is only the beginning...perception is not something that is immutably hardwired into the brain...it is a process that is learned through experience, which is both a curse and an opportunity for change". Berns explains that the reason he wrote this book is because the iconoclast is "the type of person who creates new opportunities in every area from artistic expression to technology to business...the iconoclast embodies traits of creativity and innovation that are not easily accomplished by committee...he eschews authority and convention...he thumbs his nose at rules...but given the proper environment, the iconoclast can be a major asset to any organization." The author's segment on the iconoclast who discovered MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), Paul Lauterbur, provides one of the best quotes by an iconoclat in the book: "Many said it couldn't be done, even when I was doing it!" And shortly after this quote, Berns provides one of the most insightful paragraphs in the entire book: "At every step in the process of visual perception, the brain throws out pieces of information and assimilates the remaining ones into increasingly abstract components. Experience plays a major role in this process. The human brain sees things in ways that are most familiar to it. 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 from simply staring at an object and thinking harder about it. Breakthroughs come from a perceptual system that is confronted with something that it doesn't know how to interpret. Unfamiliarity forces the brain to discard its usual categories of perception and create new ones." And later, the author explains that "visual creativity - imagination - utilizes the same systems in the brain as vision itself. 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." Throughout the remainder of the book, the author discusses how the brain learns to see, how visual imagery leads to imagination, novelty as a trigger for running the perceptual system in reverse, fear and stress, reappraisal and extinction, risk, social intelligence, the icon, innovation diffusion, early adopters, the pharmacopoeia of the iconoclast, and dozens of other topics. Throughout these segments, the author shares interesting case studies on a host of individuals such as Nolan Bushnell (creator of the original 'Pong' arcade game), Walt Disney, Florence Nightingale, Branch Rickey (who hired Jackie Robinson), and Ray Kroc (McDonald's), as well as groups of iconoclasts who worked together. And examples of the antithesis to the iconoclast are also shared, such as Charles Wang and Sanjay Kumar of Computer Associates. The CEO of Rite-Solutions, a software company based in Rhode Island, is quoted as saying: "Most companies have this funnel. Give me all of your ideas and we'll choke them down to two ideas. In my old company, if you had a great idea, we would tell you, 'Okay, we'll make an appointment for you to address the murder board,' because the murder board's job was to make sure the company took no risk. Their job was to shoot down ideas." And the president further explains that "some technical guy comes in with a good idea. Of course questions are asked of that person that they don't know. Like 'How big's the market? What's your marketing approach? What's your business plan for this? What's the product going to cost?' It's embarrassing. Most people can't answer those kinds of questions. The people who made it through these boards were not the people with the best ideas. They were the best presenters." The CEO then confesses that "If you know the game, you can get through the funnel. You make up stuff. I made it to executive VP not by being bright, but by being theatrical. By being passionate. You can fake passion. And the better ideas are being shot down because the other guy didn't do theater as well." The discussion that the author shares about their "idea market", the Rite-Solutions approach to coaxing innovation by avoiding the problem of social fear and how this fear stifles innovation, is excellent. Although this book frequently follows a number of tangents, this reviewer recommends this book to readers interested in the study of ideas and how biology plays an important role in this space. Some readers might be interested in knowing that the notes section in the back of the book is better than average.
Another Article Padded Into A Book. December 4, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
If this was a 100 page long booklet, I would give it 3.5 stars- but the last half is just padding and fluff.
Even then, Iconoclast is part of the disturbing trend of popular books from authors like Po Johnson, Malcolm Gladwell, or "made to stick" - authors repacking common sense as uncommon - and convincing the reader they are brilliant for reading it, unlike those other dumb folks out there. Most of all, they avoiding saying anything people don't want to hear and the books seem almost designed to attract lucrative corporate speaking fees, rather than really challenge the reader.
This book is a little better than the afore mentioned examples, because it does actually shed some light on new research and insights, but not by much. As a side note: For a book that touts 'thinking differently" I would have loved to hear some other example of fear/evolution than 'running from a sabre toothed tiger" (do we actually have any examples of this? ) or Rosa Parks as the defining moment in US history.
On the upside: the author does offer some great insights onto why we get stuck in thought patterns and how the perception can literally distort what is before our eyes.
There is an article in Fast Company plugging the book that is actually a better read than the book.
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