p.3 In spite of its importance, creativity has not received much attention from scientists.
Until very recently, only a few researchers had studied creativity... our knowledge about creativity has now attained a critical
mass. Perhaps for the first time, we hold in our grasp the potential to explain creativity.
p.5 Explaining creativity can help us all to be better problem solvers.
p.8 In this book, I share with you what science has discovered about creativity... My goal is to
provide you, the reader, with the best explanation of creativity that current science has to offer... let's start
our journey.
p.27,29 Scientists have used several different definitions of creativity, but they all fall somewhere between
two camps. In one camp are definitions that require that some socially valuable product be generated before the act or the
person is called "creative". Only solutions to extremely difficult problems, or significant works of genius, are recognized
as creative. This is sometimes called "big C" Creativity. In the other camp are definitions that don't require anything socially
valuable; rather, the act of creativity is itself enough, even if nothing is recognized as socially valuable is generated.
Any and all works are considered creative... In contrast to big C Creativity, this is called "little C" creativity... Scientific
studies of creativity focus on big C Creativity, and its definition based on novelty and appropriateness.
p.29 We tend to associate creativity with the human mind, and the study of creativity with
psychology.
p.30 Darwinian biology shows that natural species, although they were "created" in some sense, were not
created by any intentional being; rather, they were created through unintentional natural processes. In this sense, nature
itself is creative
p.44 One of the most obvious differences between intelligence and creativity is that intelligence
requires convergent thinking, coming up with a single right answer, while creativity requires divergent thinking,
coming up with many potential answers.
p.45 Creative achievement requires a complex combination of both divergent and convergent thinking,
and creative people are good at switching back and forth at different points in the creative process.
p.46 The Berkeley researchers found that their highly creative subjects had the following traits...
Above average intelligence... Discernment, observance, and alertness... Openness to experience... Balanced
personalities... A relative absence of repression and suppression mechanisms that control impulse and imagery... Pleasant
and materially comfortable childhoods, although they recalled their childhoods as not being particularly happy... A preference
for complexity.
p.47 a wide range of other studies has identified additional other traits of creative people...
- articularity (verbal fluency)
- metaphorical thinking
- flexible decision making
- the ability to internally visualize problems
- independence
- tolerance of ambiguity
- willingness to surmount obstacles and persevere
- willingness to take risks
- the courage of one's convictions
- high energy
- independence of judgment
- autonomy
- self-confidence, assertiveness, and belief in oneself as being "creative"
- ability to resolve and accommodate apparently opposite or conflicting traits within oneself
p.58 Only action theory can explain creativity. Creativity takes place over time, and most
of the creativity occurs while doing the work.
p.58 Psychologists have been studying the creative process for decades... most of them agree that the creative
process has four basic stages: preparation, incubation, insight, and verification
p.60 Some studies have found that creativity is an inverted U function of educational level; after
a certain point, additional formal education begins to interfere with creativity.
p.62 Einstein wrote in a letter to Hadamard that "the psychical entities which seem to serve as elements
in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be combined... This combinatory play seems to be the
essential feature in productive thought"
p.62 Incubation can't start until the creative person has prepared by internalizing the products and
conventions of the domain. But once the domain is inside the mind, incubation gets to work.
p.64 All decisive advances in the history of scientific thought can be described in terms of
mental cross-fertilization between different disciplines. - Arthur Koestler (1964, p.230) [JLJ - seems to suggest
that it would benefit us to explore how other disciplines solve problems similar to ours]
p.69 Many creators say that the best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas, and then just
get rid of the bad ones. I call this the productivity theory.
p.70 A creative insight that generates good questions is more valuable than one that conclusively
answers every known question but doesn't suggest any further research. The task of solving a good question leads
to the reformulation of difficult problems and the generation of completely new questions.
p.72 Creative activities require problem solving and decision making throughout the process, and each one
of these decision points involves a small amount of inspiration... mini-insights only gradually accumulate to result in a
finished work, as a result of a process of hard work and intellectual labor of the creator.
p.72 We say that a question well put is half resolved. True invention thus consists in posing questions.
There is something mechanical, as it were, in the art of finding solutions. The truly original mind is that which
finds problems. - Paul Souriau
p.73 Problem finding is a bigger part of our conception of creativity today than it's ever been.
p.74 Creativity is not a special mental process, but involves everyday cognitive
processes.
p.94 Darwin's theory of natural selection isn't such a bad theory of the creative process.
The creative ideas that emerge from incubation are the "variation"; the evaluation stage provides the "selection"; and the
execution of the work into physical form is "retention." This evolutionary theory of creativity was first argued in
an influential 1960 article by Donald Campbell; he called his theory evolutionary epistemology.
p.255 Scientists have discovered that only an action theory can explain creativity. Creativity
doesn't happen all in the head, as the idealist theory would have it; it happens during the hard work of execution.
That's why explaining creativity requires a focus on the creative process.
p.267 In chapter 3, we learned that creative individuals often engage in networks of enterprise, multiple
overlapping simultaneous projects... each of the projects will be in a different stage of development... Successful scientists
have learned how to structure their workday for maximum creativity. They shift from one project to another based on what they
do most effectively at a given time of day.
p.282-283 Up to the 1970s, the key ideas for windows [the familiar computer operating system] had remained
in the research laboratory. But in 1973, Xerox PARC put these ideas together and released the world's first personal computer:
the Alto... The Alto had windows and a mouse-controlled cursor. It used a laser printer... you could connect several
Altos using a network called Ethernet, also developed at PARC... Xerox chose not not market Altos because it would cost the
customer 40 thousand dollars. [Steve Jobs of Apple found a creative way to produce an inexpensive version and became
quite rich]
