in competition with one another, and the best ideas will win. (This idea is developed further in Chapter 14, Conclusion.)
3.“Effective Use of Human Resources”
Because of the “flat world” mentioned above, we will have to learn to use our human resources wisely. Outsourcing and offshoring mean that jobs in the developed world are moving—to India, to Indonesia, and anywhere that the same job can be done more cheaply and efficiently. How can we compete in the new global economy?
Peter D. Hart Research Associates asked this question of US employers. In 2006 the firm interviewed 305 employers with a staff of at least twenty-five and conducted focus groups with executives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Fairfax, Virginia; and Atlanta, Georgia. Overwhelmingly, these employers said that they wanted to hire new workers who had the “soft skills” provided by a liberal education: among them, teamwork (76%), oral and written communication skills (73%), critical thinking and analytical skills (70%), the ability to be innovative and think creatively (70%), and the ability to solve complex problems (64%). In addition, employers felt that colleges did not place enough emphasis on the same above-mentioned skills.8 [Author’s emphasis] I got a similar message from the industry advisory board of Cal State Maritime in January 2001. Using the material in this book in a classroom or workshop setting will access all of these skills; simply reading the book will, obviously, help with creativity skills.
4.Discovery of “New and Better Ways to Solve Problems”
See the survey listed above. With critical thinking you can break problems into parts and critique them; with creative thinking you can synthesize ideas and have the “aha” moment that leaps beyond logic. Richard Ogle says that imagination isn’t just another form of thinking. It is a discontinuous leap based upon what he calls “idea-spaces”—nodes of influence where “the extended mind” shares ideas with others. For more, see Chapters 7-8 and 12-13.
5.“Development of Society”
Here’s what Daniel Pink has to say:
For nearly a century, Western society in general, and American society in particular, has been dominated by a form of thinking and an approach to life that is narrowly reductive and deeply analytical . . . But that is changing. Thanks to an array of forces—material abundance that is deepening our nonmaterial yearnings, globalization that is shipping white-collar work overseas, and powerful technologies that are eliminating certain kinds of work altogether—we are entering a new age . . . [While] “left-brain” capabilities powered the Information Age . . . the capabilities we once thought of as frivolous—the “right-brain” qualities of inventiveness, empathy, joyfulness, and meaning—increasingly will determine who flourishes and who flounders.9
In other words, the new global culture demands creativity. Walter Isaacson says that in this new global economy, “A society’s competitive advantage will come not from how well its schools teach the multiplication and periodic table, but from how well they stimulated imagination and creativity.”10
6.Enhancement of your “Knowledge” Base
Some of the chapters in this book are heavily philosophical and will expose you to ideas from many disciplines. When you study the notebooks of Leonardo, the design of Brunelleschi’s dome, the specifics of Newton’s experiment with prisms, or the process used by Einstein or Feynman to generate ideas, you will have a bag of tools that you can apply to your own life. (Chapter 1 includes a 5-stage process; Chapter 3, a 10-stage process; and the chapter exercises include many other ideas.) In addition, you will enrich your mind by being exposed to some great art and thinking.
7.Part of Being Human
You may think that you are not creative, but you are. Most psychologists believe that like any other skill, creativity operates on a continuum, from the “Creativity with a capital C” that denotes the thinkers listed above to the “everyday creativity” you can apply to cooking or amateur art. By studying some processes and procedures, you can learn how to enhance the creativity you have.
8.Augmentation of your “Mental Health”
If we are prevented from exercising our full potential, we can feel depressed or even ill. Seligman and Peterson, who call creativity one of the basic human virtues, narrate this moving example (italics theirs):
At age 68, Elizabeth Layton was a retired homemaker and aging grandmother, living out her final years in a small prairie town in Kansas . . . There was really nothing outstanding about her except for one fact: she frequently suffered profound depression. Indeed, for more than three decades she had undergone all kinds of therapy, including drugs and electroshock. Nothing really helped, but she managed to persevere. And then disaster struck. Her youngest son died after a prolonged illness, plunging her into the darkest despair ever. On several occasions she contemplated suicide as the only exit from her seemingly insurmountable depression. Yet following up her sister’s wise suggestion, she enrolled in a drawing class. Elizabeth’s art teacher recognized her elderly student’s talent even before the course was completed. Elizabeth just loved to draw and draw and draw, creating one sketch after another with great facility and expressiveness. Besides allowing her to release pent-up feelings and beliefs—about death, sadness, AIDS, racism, nuclear war, American commercialism, and other personal and social issues—painting gave Elizabeth something to look forward to each day. She found her mission in life. Her works began to be displayed in art museums and galleries, first locally and then in a traveling exhibit that toured the nation. By the time she died in 1993, she had produced nearly a thousand drawings that made a deep impression on admirers all over the United States. To be sure, Elizabeth will not go down in history as a Michelangelo or a Picasso. But that was never her intention . . . The significant fact is that creativity allowed her to live out her final 15 years with a joy and a sense of purpose that she had been denied all the previous decades of her life. Moreover, while pursuing her vision, she managed to bring happiness and meaning to others.11
Creativity, however we practice it, is part of our higher need for self-actualization. Industrial engineers have come to realize that the old assembly line jobs, with their mind-numbing monotony, have an adverse effect on workers.
9.“Growing Body of Interest”
Since John Guilford addressed the American Psychological Association in 1950 to recommend a study of creativity, there has been a growing interest in the area. Psychologists now study both the process and the product. They conduct experiments, review case studies, and are defining what creativity is and how it functions.
A rich diversity of materials is now available on creativity, from the popular to the academic or the pragmatic to the theoretical. Specialized approaches also abound. Biographies of scientists like Barbara McClintock and artists like Michelangelo illuminate their creative processes. The business community regularly comments on what it calls “innovation,” and
