Chapter 1 - setting the stage

introduction

• the real story of creativity is more difficult and strange than many overly optimistic accounts have claimed. for one thing as I will try to show, an idea or product that deserves the label "creative" arises from the synergy of many sources and not only from the mind of a single person. It is easier to enhance creativity by changing conditions in the environment than by trying to make people think more creatively. And a genuinely creative accomplishment is almost never the result of sudden insight, a light bulb flashing on in the dark, but comes after years of hard work

evolution in biology and in culture

• according to this view, creativity results from the interaction of system composed of three elements:
  • a culture that contains symbolic rules
  • a person who brings novelty into the symbolic domain
  • and a field of experts who recognize and validate the innovation.
• all these are necessary for a creative idea, product, or discovery to take place
• the analogy to genes in the evolution of culture are memes, or units of information that we must learn if culture is to continue. Languages, numbers, theories, congs, recipes, laws and values are all memes that we pass on to our children so that they will be remembered. It is these memes that a creative person changes, and if enough of the right people see the change as an improvement, it will become part of the culture

attention and creativity

• creativity, at least as I deal with it in this book, is a process by which a symbolic domain in the culture is changed. New songs, new ideas, new machines are what creativity is about. but because these changes do not happen automatically as in biological evolution, it is necessary to consider the price we must pay for creativity to occur. It takes effort to change traditions. for example, memes must be learned before they can be changed: a musician must learn the musical tradition, the notation system, the way intruments are played before she can think of writing a new song; before an inventor can improve on airplane design he has to learn physics, aerodynamics, and why birds dont' fall out of the sky
• as cultures evolve, it becomes increasingly difficult to muster more than one domain of knowledge. therefore, it follows that as culture evolves, specialized knowledge will be favored over generalized knowledge. Of course, this trend toward specialization is not necessarily a good thing. It can easily lead to a cultural fragmentation such as described in the biblical story of the building of the tower of babel
• when we meet a person who focuses all of his attention on physics or music and ignores us and forgets our names, we call that person "arrogant" even though he may be extremely humble and friendly if he could only spare attention from his pursuit. Similarly, if he pursues his work regardless of other people's plans, we call him "ruthless". in fact, creative people are neither single minded, specialized, nor selfish. indeed they seem to be the opposite: they love to make connections with adjacent areas of knowledge. they tend to be - in principle - caring and sensitive. yet the demands of their role inevitably push them toward specialization and selfishness. of the many paradoxes of creativity, this is perhaps the most difficult to avoid

what's the good of studying creativity

• some people argue that studying creativity is an elite distraction from the more pressing problems confronting us. we should focus all our energies on combating overpopulation, poverty, or mental retardation instead. a concern for creativity is an unnecessary luxury, according to this argument. but this position is somewhat shortsighted. first of all, workable new solutions to poverty or overpopulation will not appear magically by themselves. problems are solved only when we devote a great deal of attention to them and in a creative way. second, to have a good life, it is not enough to remove what is wrong from it, we also need a positive goal, otherwise why keep going?
• in one company after another, as downsizing continues, one hears CEOs report that this is not an age for innovators but for bookkeepers, not a climate for building and risking but for cutting expenses. Yet as economic competition heats up around the globe, exactly the opposite strategy is needed
• when school budgets tighten and test scores wobble, more and more schools opt for dispensing with frills - usually with the arts and extracurricular activities - so as to focus instead on the so-called basics. This would not be bad if the "three R's" (reading writing arithmetic) were taught in ways that encouraged originality and creative thinking; unfortunately, they rarely are

how the study was conducted

• there were three main conditions for selecting respondents:
  • the person had to have made a difference to a major domain of culture - one of the sciences, the arts, business, government, or human well-being in general
  • he or she had to be still actively involved in that domain (or a different one)
  • and he or she had to be at least sixty years old (in a few cases, when circumstances warranted, we interview respondents who were a bit younger)

too good to be true?

• but after several years of intensive listening and reading, I have come to the conclusion that the reigning stereotype of the tortured genius is to a large extent a myth created by romantic ideology and supported by evidence from isolated - one hopes - atypical historical periods