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Elastic: Flexible Thinking in a Time of Change by Leonard Mlodinow. Mlodinow's book is the most direct available account of cognitive flexibility as a distinct capacity — what it is neurologically, how it differs from analytical intelligence, what conditions deprive people of it, and what the research shows about developing it. Mlodinow draws on the neuroscience of prefrontal function, the executive function research, and his own engagement with the thinking of scientists, artists, and entrepreneurs to build a case for why elastic thinking — his term for what this article calls cognitive flexibility — is the capacity most predictive of performance in environments characterised by change and uncertainty. The book is more narrative and accessible than the research literature it draws on, but it does not oversimplify the mechanisms it covers, and its account of the specific conditions — including positive mood, certain psychosocial states, and cross-domain engagement — that enhance or impair flexible thinking is more granular than most popular accounts of the topic. For the entrepreneur or professional trying to understand why their thinking sometimes feels genuinely more flexible and other times seems stuck in a single framework regardless of effort, Mlodinow provides the most readable and mechanically specific account available.