Imagine- How Creativity Works (ARC) PDF
Preview Imagine- How Creativity Works (ARC)
Author of How We Decide How Creativity Works “Jonah Lehrer’s new book confirms what his fans have known all along – that he knows more about science than a lot of scientists and more about writing than a lot of writers.” —Malcolm Gladwell Did you know that the most creative companies have centralized bathrooms? ἀat brainstorming meetings are a terrible idea? ἀat the color blue can help you double your creative output? From the bestselling author of How We Decide comes a sparkling and revelatory look at the new science of creativity. Shattering the myth of muses, higher powers, even creative “types,” Jonah Lehrer demonstrates that creativity is not a single gift possessed by the lucky few. It’s a variety of distinct thought processes that we can all learn to use more effectively. Lehrer reveals the importance of embracing the rut, thinking like a child, and daydreaming productively, then he takes us out of our own heads to show how we can make our neighborhoods more vibrant, our companies more productive, and our schools more effective. We’ll learn about Bob Dylan’s writing habits and the drug addiction of poets. We’ll meet a bartender who thinks like a chemist, and an autistic surfer who invented an entirely new surfing move. We’ll see why Elizabethan England experienced a creative explosion, and how Pixar designed its office space to get the most out of its talent. Col apsing the layers separating the neuron from the finished symphony, Imagine reveals the deep inventiveness of the human mind, and its essential role in our increasingly complex world. © 2012 Jonah Lehrer is a contributing editor at Wired and a frequent contributor to The New Yorker. He writes the Head Case column for the Wall Street Journal and regularly appears on WNYC’s Radiolab. His writing has also appeared in Nature, the New York Times Magazine, Scientific American, and Outside. The author of two previous books, Proust Was a Neuroscientist and How We Decide, he graduated from Columbia University and attended Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. Cover illustration © Yulia Brodskaya • Cover design by Martha Kennedy • Cover photography by Michael Leznik Pre-pub media event • Fifteen-city national author tour National print and online advertising • Promotional book trailer Author website: www.jonahlehrer.com • On Twitter: @jonahlehrer, or follow #Imagine » Publication date: March 20, 2012 « ISBN 978-0-547-38607-2 304 pages | $26.00 | 5½ × 8¼ | Illustrations U N C O R R E C T E D P R O O F Jacket scans and press materials are available at www.hmhbooks.com. ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF This copy is supplied for review purposes only, and for limited distribution. As the work is still under review by the author and the publisher, there may be corrections, deletions, or other changes before publication. Not for resale. IMAGINE: How Creativity Works Jonah Lehrer Houghton Mifflin Harcourt BOSTO N • NEW YORK 2012 Copyright © 2012 by Jonah Lehrer All rights reserved For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Miffl in Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003. www.hmhbooks.com CONTENTS Introduction ALONE 1. BOB DYLAN’S BRAIN 2. ALPHA WAVES (CONDITION BLUE) 3. THE UNCONCEALING 4. THE LETTING GO 5. THE OUTSIDER TOGETHER 6. THE POWER OF Q 7. URBAN FRICTION 8. THE SHAKESPEARE PARADOX Coda Notes Acknowledgments Index Hell is a place where nothing connects with nothing. —T. S. Eliot, Introduction to Dante’s Inferno INTRODUCTION Procter and Gamble had a problem: it needed a new floor cleaner. In the 1980s, the company had pioneered one lucrative consumer product after another, from pull-up diapers to anti-dandruff shampoo. It had developed color-safe detergent and designed a quilted paper towel that could absorb 85 percent more liquid than other paper towels. These innovations weren’t lucky accidents: Procter and Gamble was deeply invested in research and development. At the time, the corporation had more scientists on staff than any other company in the world, more PhDs than the faculties of MIT, UC-Berkeley, and Harvard combined. And yet, despite the best efforts of the chemists in the household-cleaning division, there were no new floor products in the pipeline. The company was still selling the same lemon-scented detergents and cloth mops; consumers were still sweeping up their kitchens using wooden brooms and metal dustpans. The reason for this creative failure was simple: it was extremely difficult to make a stronger floor cleaner that didn’t also damage the floor. Although Procter and Gamble had invested millions of dollars in a new generation of soaps, these products tended to fail during the rigorous testing phase, as they peeled off wood varnishes and irritated delicate skin. The chemists assumed that they had exhausted the chemical possibilities. That’s when Procter and Gamble decided to try a new approach. The company outsourced its innovation needs to Continuum, a design firm with offices in Boston and Los Angeles. “I think P and G came to us because their scientists were telling them to give up,” says Harry West, a leader on the soap team and now Continuum’s CEO. “So they told us to think crazy, to try to come up with something that all those chemists couldn’t.” But the Continuum designers didn’t begin with molecules. They didn’t spend time in the lab worrying about the chemistry of soap. Instead, they visited people’s homes and watched dozens of them engage in the tedious ritual of floor cleaning. The designers took detailed notes on the vacuuming of carpets and the sweeping of kitchens. When the notes weren’t enough, they set up video cameras in living rooms. “This is about the most boring footage you can imagine,” West says. “It’s movies of mopping, for God’s sake. And we had
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