From the book called The Medici Effect (link takes you a free PDF of the book), comes several interesting quotes. Firstly, there’s Thomas Kuhn – from his highly recommended book called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions – comes this :

“…almost always the men who achieve…fundamental inventions of a new paradigm have either been very young or very new to the field whose paradigm they change.”

Also, on the subject of breaking paradigms and new idea creation :

“One of the earliest creativity researchers, Sarnoff Mednick, wrote, “The more mutually remote the elements of the new combination, the more creative the process or solution.” In other words if the concepts combined are very different, the more creative the process or the solution”

Finally, a great quote from someone who came from the edges to challenge a profession. Deepak Chopra started from a institutional medical background, but began to look beyond the standard answers for more understanding of the complexities of mind-body health.

“When I started out people thought I was on some fringe. They thought I was certifiably insane.”

Years later he gave the keynote at the Harvard Medical School conference and Time Magazine named him as one of the top one hundred heroes and icons of the twentieth century.