I’ve made comments related to this topic, but Dominic Muren over on IDFuel does a better job in his most recent entry (Link). From his post:

the true strength in a designer’s brain lies in the way it helps form connections between isolated ideas.

I tend to agree. Go read the entire entry and check out his other posts. Dominic is, in my opinion, one of the more interesting and insightful design bloggers on the net.