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 ADAPT
At any moment, roughly a million people are reclining in comfortable chairs thousands of miles above the surface of the planet. Such has been the success of commercial flight. It was not long ago that traveling through the sky was an unthinkably rare and risky adventure. Now it hardly lifts an eyebrow: we board like sleepwalkers, only becoming energized if something gets in the way of our expectation of delicious meals, reclining seats and streaming movies.
In one of his routines, the comedian Louis C.K. marvels at the degree to which travelers have lost their wonder with commercial flight. He impersonates a griping passenger: “And then we get on the plane and they made us sit there on the runway, for forty minutes. We had to sit there.” Louis’ response to the passenger: “Oh? Really? What happened next? Did you fly through the air, incredibly, like a bird? Did you partake in the miracle of human flight, you non-contributing zero?” He turns his attention to people who complain about delays. “Delays? Really? New York to California in five hours. That used to take thirty years. Plus, you would die on the way there.” Louis recalls his first experience with wifi on a flight, in 2009, when the concept was first unveiled. “I’m sitting on the plane and they go, “Open up your laptop, you can go on the internet.” And it’s fast, and I’m watching YouTube clips. It’s amazing: I’m on an airplane!” But a few moments later, the wifi stops working. And the passenger next to Louis gets angry. The passenger exclaims, “This is bullshit!” Louis says, “I mean, how quickly does the world owe him something that he knew existed only ten seconds ago?”
How quickly? Very quickly. The new rapidly evolves into the normal. Just consider how unremarkable smartphones are now – but it wasn’t long ago that we jingled coins in our pockets, hunted for phone booths, tried to coordinate meeting spots and botched encounters because of planning errors. Smartphones revolutionized our communications, but new tech becomes basic, universal, and invisible before our eyes.
The