The road less traveled is often rife with opportunity. Neuroscientist Eleanor Maguire’s signature study of the hippocampus shed light on the brain’s muscle memory and on its ability to grow and change over time. Maguire’s research challenged long-held beliefs in the brain’s finite capacity. Her pivotal research also changed the collective understanding of memory from merely retaining past stories to storing lessons that serve as guideposts for the future. Her groundbreaking work inspired AI researcher Demis Hassabis, who later became her protégé and the eventual cofounder and CEO of Google DeepMind, to seek her out as his doctoral adviser.
Silicon Valley investor Richard Kramlich wasn’t one to bet on a sure thing. One of his biggest gambles was on two tech entrepreneurs—Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak—who didn’t have a top-performing computer company yet, but it sure became one. Yet another gamble paid off when the fearless investor backed a start-up with a little-known software that had yet to find its footing: PowerPoint. Ad executive Ron Travisano decided that TV commercials didn’t have to be grounded in reality. He and his ad partner combined humor and fantasy to create an award-winning Purina ad that featured singing cats, raising the bar for the world of advertising. Nurse Loretta C. Ford believed in expanding the narrow definition of what nurses could be. In 1965, Ford helped design a curriculum for a new type of nurse—the nurse practitioner—paving the way for the nearly 400,000 who practice in the United States today.
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