To zoom in, use a close-up lens to observe the situation in more detail and pick up on nuances, incongruities, anomalies, and weak signals. It is by talking to a woman making bamboo stools that Muhammad Yunus conceptualized the need for micro-financing solutions.

To zoom out, use a wide-angle lens to take in the larger patterns and trends, and engage different categories of stakeholders with a view on the phenomenon you’re trying to change. For example, a hospital trying to improve the quality of a patient’s experience might engage patients, their families, doctors, nurses, insurance companies, start-ups, and other stakeholders to capture equally valuable (and complementary) perspectives on the problems that exist and the solutions that make sense.

To see the world differently, try to switch focus—to redirect your attention to the signals coming from fringe sources, people and things you might normally perceive as marginal. It is by talking to school janitors that Kellogg got the insights that led them to develop healthier snacks for kids. Lego regularly plugs into the internet forums of its adult fans for a change of perspective.

Time-outs involve stepping back from the action and confusion to reflect consciously on your approach and how to redirect your efforts. To be creative, you will have to learn to disengage from what you’re currently doing, pause and reflect. When things don’t seem to work out the way you want, take regular time-outs as they do in sports. This will give your mind a chance to identify the sources of blockage and find new and creative ways to deal with the situation at hand and the problems you’re trying to resolve. Or you may choose to take a walk. Some of the most fertile minds in history, including philosophers and writers such as Kierkegaard, Thoreau, and Dickens, regarded walks as rituals sacred to their creative routines. At the minimum, block time for breaks and reflection in your agenda.

Time-offs involve taking a longer mental or physical vacation from your current preoccupations to tap the power of the unfocused brain. Adrian Ferra, the famous chef who created El Bulli – which for five years in a row was voted best restaurant in the world – used to close his business 6 months every year to achieve the peace and quiet he needed to refresh his creative approach. The search for breakthrough ideas and solutions should never be portrayed as a race. When we study real accounts of innovation, we find that breakthrough ideas take time to incubate and germinate. And their development is often preceded by long spells of reflection or incubation.

To release your imagination, you must unlock the cell door and approach situations and problems as children do—with an open mind. Don’t wait for a Eureka moment to arrive! You can come up with very creative concepts simply by being open to possibilities that exist and by asking “what-if-questions”. That’s what McLaren did in 2009, when they asked themselves what would happen if they were forced to abandon their current activities in Formula 1 racing. This led them to realize they had capabilities in aerodynamics, predictive analytics, and teamwork that could be applied to other sectors as well – from cycling and sailing teams to health care systems and air traffic control services. Today McLaren has morphed into a consulting and technology group that happens to have a successful Formula 1 team.

To innovate like McLaren did, you should also be willing to play with ideas and concepts to see what comes out. The discoverer of penicillin, Alexander Fleming, was accused by his boss of approaching research like a game. When asked what he did, he replied: “I play with microbes. . . . It is very pleasant to break the rules and to be able to find something that nobody had thought of.”

Your playful side will have fun blazing new trails, whether they lead to breakthrough solutions or a brick wall. This is the attitude that will give you the emotional space you need to make judgment-free mistakes and then study the results of those mistakes with an open mind. As Bernard Shaw once said: “We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”

To stimulate your imagination, you can also seek new inputs and associations. Radia Perlman is a legend in tech circles. Her work was instrumental in bringing the Internet to life. And she is best known for being the inventor of the STP protocols that help people communicate across interconnected corporate networks. Where did she get her inspiration? From nature, and the image of a tree in particular. Likewise, it is by studying the wild cheetah that Van Phillips designed the famous prosthetic limb that powered double amputee Oscar Pistorius to succeed as a professional sprinter.

Imaginative people, like Radia Perlman or Van Phillips, are great at using analogies and combining concepts in new and interesting ways. The reflective property of cats’ eyes inspired Englishman Percy Shaw to develop reflectors to help motorists drive safely at night, and the annoying thistle burrs that attach themselves to clothing on hikes is what spurred Swiss engineer George de Mestral to invent Velcro.

To welcome surprises, try to look for ways to acquire faster, richer, and more unexpected data from the outside world. Experiment like Frank Gehry, the pioneering Canadian architect who built the Guggenheim museum and the Louis Vuitton foundation in Paris. To avoid falling in the Segway trap, Gehry is always eager to get real, honest feedback from clients and for this, he doesn’t just ask clients to react to a few sketches or miniature models he’s built. No, he develops extreme – almost shocking – points of view that he will never implement in practice. Why? Because he values negative feedback as much as the positive, and so he uses what he calls “Shrek models” (a Yiddish expression for “fright”). By provoking strong emotional reactions, whether positive or negative, he hopes to better understand how his clients think. The inputs he receives can be the source of unanticipated refinements, and the basis of entirely new models. Gehry is able to learn from the discomfort of clients, which lets him explore ideas and concepts that are quite unconventional as a result.

So when you experiment, always try to investigate multiple and ideally extreme, models in parallel. Alien thinkers create multiple concepts and pursue the option that seems to have the most traction with independent experts or actual paying customers. This gives you, as an experimenter, two advantages. First, it will keep you from getting too attached to any one idea. You can more easily remain open to learning—and pivoting—if you are not overinvested in your prototype. Second, it accelerates your discovery and lets you pivot earlier, before hitting a wall.

The primary aim should always be to improve your thinking – and not prove you are indeed correct.

To accept surprises, you must be willing to let the data speak – interpreting it without prejudice. You need resilience to accept criticism, learn from it, and then move on. Even if you acquire robust feedback through parallel testing or provocation, you could still fail if you aren’t receptive enough to the findings.

As cofounder of Pixar (and later president of both Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios), Ed Catmull learned this the hard way. At Pixar, Catmull oversaw a parade of film directors who were trying to bring their creative projects to the screen. And he noticed systematic patterns of resistance to constructive and well-intentioned feedback. To combat filmmakers’ resistance to feedback at Pixar, Ed Catmull created a group called the Braintrust. It consisted of a panel of experts (from a core group of directors, writers, and heads of story) who delivered candid feedback to help directors pivot when necessary. In addition to the quality of the feedback, the key to the Braintrust’s impact was its two ground rules: (1) no hierarchy, and (2) no obligation to implement the feedback. As a result of these rules, directors didn’t enter discussions in a defensive posture and were less prone to emotional reactions. Therefore, they were more likely to hear, digest, and act on the feedback.

You don’t have to work at Pixar to create a Braintrust. As an innovator, you can surround yourself with people capable of challenging your interpretations of the evidence. Catmull saw this as the best antidote to confirmation biases: “Seek out people who are willing to level with you, and when you find them, hold them close.”

To survive, you must be able to map the sources of friction and then work to neutralize them in two ways: (1) by using camouflage to evade detection and the destructive judgment of others, especially during the project’s early stages; and (2) by strengthening your ability to absorb hits from critics and opponents. For example, in terms of the language you use, make sure to minimize the disruptive potential of your project by stressing its links with the past and the mission/value/DNA of the company. You can demonstrate that, although the solution is different, it’s not radically different. It’s a complex twin challenge that you have to resolve. On one hand, you must keep your solution alive and on the other hand, you must ensure that it’s not adulterated to the point that it’s no longer disruptive. You do want your solution to remain original, despite all the forces trying to derail it or make it conform.

To thrive, you need to identify positive forces to help your creative ideas gain traction. After Bertrand Piccard found that the aviation industry had zero interest in building a solar plane, he turned to yacht builders instead who brought him totally new perspectives on how to advance his Solar Impulse project. Demis Hassabis, co-founder of the machine learning lab DeepMind got the seed funding he needed to start his business by engaging a key investor around his passion for chess. The business discussion came a bit later. In the words of a former Lego innovation director, you have to be a “diplomatic rebel.” If you want to build support for your disruptive ideas, you have to build bridges.