"Creative ideas" by Murray Gell-Mann

I have been listening to a talk given by Murray Gell-Mann on how to come up with creative ideas and some of the highlights of his talk were
* Don't play by the rules, rather play with the rules. As an example he illustrated Einstein who proposed in his special theory of relativity that space and time are not absolute and depend on the frame of inertia of the observer. No one could imagine this idea since space and time were assumed to be absolute as per Newtonian physics.
* Problem formulation is much harder than problem solution . I couldn't agree more with this statement. The only place where problems are clearly defined is school.
* It is possible to build new creative ideas, by being more serious about the existing ones. To put it another words, it is possible to build new ideas by looking at the existing ideas through a different angle. Now since Murray is Physicist the idea he illustrated is that of Einstein using Max Plank's concept of Quantum to explain the photoelectric effect for which he won the noble prize.
* Random thinking helps in coming up a new idea as well.