Both groups were equally good at thinking up ordinary uses for the objects.

WSJ: Mind & Matter: Alison Gopnik on Beating the Brain's Curbs on Innovation

"The French are not very good at thinking outside the box, " he says.

WSJ: Pierre Herm�� | Sugar, Spice and All Things Nice

"During treatment, I started thinking that I wanted to feel good at the end of the day and needed a job change, " Caggiano says.

CNN: A head-to-toe look at breast cancer's real effects

Broad and Anderson would no doubt have arrived at the ground thinking it was a good day to bowl, given largely overcast skies and the notorious swinging conditions beside the River Trent.

BBC: Kiwis reeling after Anderson haul

More than a few of the Blue Dogs who gave Pelosi her slight 220-215 margin in November will be looking at this next vote thinking there is a good chance they will be the next victim of a Scott Brown-style outsider campaign.

FORBES

"At the moment my thinking is to have a good season and finish well, " he said.

BBC: London Irish's Chris Malone reveals coaching dream

You may be weary at first, thinking you might mess up a good thing, but you will likely discover a more efficient, innovative process along the way.

FORBES: 4 Key Marketing Strategies from the Startup World

Such thinking at last shows signs of changing, and a good thing too.

ECONOMIST: The threat from the internet

So then why are some people so good at recognizing, understanding, and even creating future trends and behavior (thinking Oprah Winfrey, Steve Jobs and Warren Buffett) and others not?

FORBES: To Be A Great Innovator, Start By Changing Your Perspective

Being good at handling ambiguity is never the result of uncultivated talent, but rather extremely disciplined thinking, gained by years of focused study, careful apprenticeship, knowledge assimilation, and discarding hundreds of would-be good ideas.

FORBES: What Makes Analytics Wizards So Good? They Do Everything Backwards

At some points, we've got to be thinking about the larger good.

WHITEHOUSE: President Obama Addresses Business and Tourism Leaders

Bolten told the staff that "if you're thinking about leaving at some time in the future, now would be a good time to do it, " the press secretary said.

CNN: New Bush aide tells staff to expect more changes

Take hope, my humanities-oriented friends, software is finally getting good enough to shift engineers to the back-office and unleash humanities-centric creative thinking at the front office, which will be transformative.

FORBES: Apps Lead the Way to the Next Innovation Hypercycle