Sometimes we assume that fancy Ivy League MBA’s and technology degrees are the prerequisite of building an innovative mind. Yet, people looking to shun college often point out that many of the business and technology world’s most innovative minds never attended college, or dropped out within the first few years. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Ted Turner are just a few of the world’s most famous people who have never graduated college.

The fact that so many people have dropped out of college, or shunned it all together, suggests that a college degree itself is not what leads to success. Of course, anyone who knows anything about economic markets knows this much. Demand for goods and services is what drives markets and ultimately success. Don’t believe me? Just ask any of the 5 to 6 million people who fly Virgin Air if they care that Sir Richard Branson never attended in college.

Think of all of those names I mentioned in the first few paragraphs. What do they all have in common? Every single one of them is generally regarded as very intelligent. In fact, Gates, Zuckerberg, and Turner all attended Ivy League schools at some point. Even gaining admissions to such a university is very difficult. Most of the other drop-out billionaires are generally regarded has having high IQ’s.

While a high IQ by no means guarantees that people will achieve high levels of success. Researchers have estimated, however, that about 45% of billionaires have IQ scores that would fall in the top 1 percent, making them literal geniuses. IQ scores, as imperfect of measurements as they are, generally rely on testing critical thinking and logical skills.

And herein lies the opportunity for higher education leaders, and indeed any education leader. Innovation is not a process of SWOT charts or Porter’s Five analysis, or any of the other popular business tools found in college business courses (this isn’t to say such tools can’t be useful or should be shunned). Instead, innovation is a process of critical and creative thinking.

Critical thinking refers to the ability to dissect complex problems and ideas, and to be able to understand these ideas at the deepest levels. Critical thinking goes beyond understanding what is written in a text book or stated in a lecture. It involves taking such knowledge and learning how it applies to the deeper underlying processes that shape our world.

Creative thinking involves generating completely new ideas. These ideas might not even conform to the processes of the world, they could literally be outside of the “stream.”

Of course, these definitions are over simplifications, and in fact so is this entire article. Dealing with such massive concepts requires a lot more space than a few hundred words. But the more important point isn’t the knowledge presented, but whether you the reader can engage your own creative and critical thinking skills to delve even deeper.