nations, symphonies, laws, sonnets, prosthetic arms, smartphones, ceiling fans, skyscrapers, boats, kites, laptops, ketchup bottles, auto-driving cars. And this mental software gives rise to tomorrow, in the form of self-healing cement, moving buildings, carbon-fiber violins, biodegradable cars, nanospacecraft and the chronic refashioning of the future. But, just like the massive computer programs running silently in the circuitry of our laptops, our inventiveness typically runs in the background, outside of our direct awareness.
There’s something special about the algorithms we’re running under the hood. We are members of a vast family tree of animal species. But why don’t cows choreograph dances? Why don’t squirrels design elevators for their treetops? Why don’t alligators invent speedboats? An evolutionary tweak in the algorithms running in human brains has allowed us to absorb the world and create what-if versions of it. This book is about that creative software: how it works, why we have it, what we make, and where it’s taking us. We’ll show how the desire to violate our own expectations leads to the runaway inventiveness of our species. By looking at a tapestry of the arts, science, and technology, we’ll see the threads of innovation that link disciplines.
As important as creativity has been in our species’ recent centuries, it is the cornerstone for our next steps. From our daily activities to our schools to our companies, we are all riding arm-in-arm into a future that compels a constant remodeling of the world. In recent decades, the world has found itself transitioning from a manufacturing economy to an information economy. But that is not where this road ends. As computers become better at digesting mountains of data, people are being freed up to work on other tasks. We’re already seeing the first glimpses of this new model: the creativity economy. Synthetic biologist, app developer, self-driving car designer, quantum computer designer, multimedia engineer – these are positions that didn’t exist when most of us were in school, and they represent the vanguard of what’s coming. When you grab your morning coffee ten years from now, you may be walking into a job that looks very different from the one you’re working now. For these reasons, corporate boardrooms everywhere are scrambling to figure out how to keep up, because the technologies and processes of running a company are constantly changing.
Only one thing allows us to face these accelerating changes: cognitive flexibility. We absorb the raw materials of experience and manipulate them to form something new. Because of our capacity to reach beyond the facts we’ve learned, we open our eyes to the world around us but envision other possible worlds. We learn facts and generate fictions. We master what is, and envisage what-ifs.
Thriving in a constantly changing world requires us to understand what’s happening inside our heads when we innovate. By unearthing the tools and strategies that drive the creation of new ideas, we can set our sights on the decades that lie ahead instead of the ones that lie behind.
This mandate for innovation is not reflected in our school systems. Creativity is a driver of youthful discovery and expression – but it becomes stifled in deference to proficiencies that are more easily measured and tested. This sidelining of creative learning may reflect larger societal trends. Teachers typically prefer the well-behaved student to the creative one, who is often perceived as rocking the boat. A recent poll found that most Americans want children to have respect for elders over independence, good manners over curiosity, and would prefer them to be well behaved rather than creative.7
If we want a bright future for our children, we need to recalibrate our priorities. At the speed the world is changing, the old playbooks for living and working will inevitably be supplanted – and we need to prepare our children to author the new ones. The same cognitive software running in the minds of the NASA engineers and Picasso runs in the minds of our young, but it needs to be cultivated. A balanced education nurtures skills and imagination. That kind of education will pay off decades after students throw their mortarboards in the air and step into a world that we, their parents, can barely foresee.
One of us (Anthony) is a composer, and the other (David) is a neuroscientist. We’ve been friends for many years. A few years ago, Anthony composed the oratorio Maternity based on David’s story The Founding Mothers, which traces a maternal line back through history. Working together led to an ongoing dialogue about creativity. We’d each been studying it from our own perspectives. For thousands of years, the arts have given us direct access to our inner lives, offering us glimpses not only of what we think about, but also how we think. No culture in human history has been without its music, visual art and storytelling. Meanwhile, in recent decades, brain science has made leaps forward in understanding the often unconscious forces that underlie human behavior. We began to realize that our views led to a synergistic vision of innovation – and that’s what this book is about.
We will rifle through the inventions of human society like paleontologists ransacking the fossil record. Combined with the latest understanding of the inner workings of the brain, this will help us uncover many facets of this essential part of ourselves. Part I introduces our need for creativity, how we think up new ideas, and how our innovations are shaped by where and when we live. Part II explores key features of the creative mentality, from proliferating options to brooking risk. Part III turns to companies and classrooms, illustrating how to foster creativity in our incubators for the future. What follows is a dive into the creative mind, a celebration of the human spirit, and a vision of how to reshape our worlds.
CHAPTER 1
TO INNOVATE IS HUMAN
WHY CAN’T WE FIND THE PERFECT STYLE?
To appreciate the human requirement to innovate, look no further than the sculpting of hair on the heads around you.
This same sort of reworking is seen across all the artifacts we create, from bicycles to stadiums.
This all begs a question: why do hairstyles and bikes and stadiums keep changing? Why can’t we find the perfect solution and stick with it?
The answer: innovation will never stop. It’s never about the right thing; it’s about the next thing. Humans lean into the future, and there is never a settling point. But what makes the human brain so restless?
WE QUICKLY
