Using scenario planning to create White Space where employees can develop new solutions is a hallmark of successful companies.

FORBES: Finding the Money - Be Smarter like IBM

These white space teams also must have permission to explore the solution unencumbered by past success, using any and all technology, approaches and processes.

FORBES: Where Larry Page must manage risk, and invest time, as Google's new CEO

Another example of his unorthodox thinking is his observation that painting the roofs of buildings around the world white and using light-coloured road surfaces rather than blacktop would reflect a lot of sunlight back into space possibly enough to have an effect on global warming as big as taking every car in the world off the road for a decade.

ECONOMIST: Face value