Leonard Mlodinow explains “Elastic Thinking” as

The capacity to let go of comfortable ideas and become accustomed to ambiguity and contradiction;

The capability to rise above conventional mind-sets and to re frame the questions we ask;

The ability to abandon our ingrained assumptions and open ourselves to new paradigms;

The propensity to rely on imagination as much as on logic and to generate and integrate a wide variety of ideas;

And the willingness to experiment and be tolerant of failure.