"Creativity is a lot like looking at the world through a kaleidoscope. You look at a set of elements, the same ones everyone else sees, but then reassemble those floating bits and pieces into an enticing new possibility. Innovators shake up their thinking as though their brains are kaleidoscopes, permitting an array of different patterns out of the same bits of reality. Changemasters challenge prevailing wisdom. They start from the premise that there are many solutions to a problem and that by changing the angle on the kaleidoscope, new possibilities will emerge. Where other people would say, 'That’s impossible. We’ve always done it this way,' they see another approach. Where others see only problems, they see possibilities.

Kaleidoscope thinking is a way of constructing new patterns from the fragments of data available— patterns that no one else has yet imagined because they challenge conventional assumptions about how pieces of the organization, the marketplace, or the community fit together."

— Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Evolve!: Succeeding in the Digital Culture of Tomorrow. Harvard Business School Press, 2001.