Imagine

(Inspiration, after all, literally means “breathed upon.”) Because people couldn’t understand creativity, they assumed that their best ideas came from somewhere else. The imagination was outsourced.

The moral is that these scientists weren’t producing better research because they were smarter or more creative or had more money. Instead, they had more success because they were more willing to fail.

In fact, the act of letting go has inspired some of the most famous works of modern culture, from John Coltrane’s saxophone solos to Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings. It’s Miles Davis playing his trumpet in Kind of Blue — most of the album was recorded on the very first take — and Lenny Bruce inventing jokes at Carnegie Hall

The imagination is transformed from something metaphysical — a property of the gods — into a particular twitch of cortex

First, there was the anthropologist phase, those nine months of careful observation and tedious videotaping. Although this phase didn’t generate any new ideas — the point was to clear the mind of old ones — it played an essential role in the creative process, allowing the team to better understand the problem. And then, when West watched the woman sweep up the coffee grounds, there was the classic moment of insight, a breakthrough appearing in a fraction of a second.

NOCCA and High Tech High

The final essential meta-idea involves managing the rewards of innovation. Inventors should profit from their past inventions, but we also need to encourage a culture of borrowing and adaptation

The assumption is that a creative scientist should be able to pursue ideas without having to justify them to a panel of experts. Sometimes, the experiments with the most potential are still lacking evidence.

But we must also be honest: the creative process will never be easy, no matter how much we know about neurons and cities and Shakespeare. Our inventions will always be shadowed by uncertainty and contingency, by the sheer serendipity of brain cells making new connections. The science of the imagination doesn’t fit neatly on a PowerPoint slide, and it can’t be summarized in a subtitle. (If creativity were that easy, Picasso wouldn’t be so famous.) Despite all the clever studies and rigorous experiments, our most essential mental talent remains the most mysterious.

Sometimes we need to relax in the shower and sometimes we need to chug caffeine. Sometimes we need to let ourselves go, and sometimes we need to escape from what we know. There is a time for every kind of thinking.
But the brain is only the beginning. We now know creativity is also an emergent property of people coming together. When collaborating with others, we should seek out the sweet spot of Q, just like the artists behind West Side Story. Brainstorming might feel nice, but constructive criticism is always better; every company needs the equivalent of the Pixar bathroom, a space that forces employees to interact as if they were in a dense city.
And then we need to get our meta-ideas right so that we don’t inhibit our collective imagination. We should aspire to excessive genius.