Imagine: How Creativity Works

Author of How We Decide How Creativity Works “Jonah Lehrer’s new book confirms what his fans have known all along – that he knows more about science than a lot of scientists and more about writing than a lot of writers.” —Malcolm Gladwell Did you know that the most creative companies have centralized bathrooms? ἀat brainstorming meetings are a terrible idea? ἀat the color blue can help you double your creative output? From the best-selling author of How We Decide comes a sparkling and revelatory look at the new science of creativity. Shattering the myth of muses, higher powers, even creative “types,” Jonah Lehrer demonstrates that creativity is not a single gift possessed by the lucky few. It’s a variety of distinct thought processes that we can all learn to use more effectively. Lehrer reveals the importance of embracing the rut, thinking like a child, and daydreaming productively, then he takes us out of our own heads to show how we can make our neighborhoods more vibrant, our companies more productive, and our schools more effective. We’ll learn about Bob Dylan’s writing habits and the drug addiction of poets. We’ll meet a bartender who thinks like a chemist, and an autistic surfer who invented an entirely new surfing move. We’ll see why Elizabethan England experienced a creative explosion, and how Pixar designed its office space to get the most out of its talent. Col apsing the layers separating the neuron from the finished symphony, Imagine reveals the deep inventiveness of the human mind, and its essential role in our increasingly complex world. © 2012 Jonah Lehrer is a contributing editor at Wired and a frequent contributor to The New Yorker. He writes the Head Case column for the Wall Street Journal and regularly appears on WNYC’s Radiolab. His writing has also appeared in Nature, the New York Times Magazine, Scientific American, and Outside. The author of two previous books, Proust Was a Neuroscientist and How We Decide, he graduated from Columbia University and attended Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. Cover illustration © Yulia Brodskaya • Cover design by Martha Kennedy • Cover photography by Michael Leznik Pre-pub media event • Fifteen-city national author tour National print and online advertising • Promotional book trailer Author website: www.jonahlehrer.com • On Twitter: @jonahlehrer, or follow #Imagine » Publication date: March 20, 2012 « ISBN 978-0-547-38607-2 304 pages | $26.00 | 5½ × 8¼ | Illustrations U N C ORRECTEDPROOF Jacket scans and press materials are available at www.hmhbooks.com. ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF This copy is supplied for review purposes only, and for limited distribution. As the work is still under review by the author and the publisher, there may be corrections, deletions, or other changes before publication. Not for resale. IMAGINE: How Creativity Works Jonah Lehrer Houghton Mifflin Harcourt BOSTO N • NEW YORK 2012 Copyright © 2012 by Jonah Lehrer All rights reserved For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Miffl in Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003. www.hmhbooks.com CONTENTS Introduction ALONE 1. BOB DYLAN’S BRAIN 2. ALPHA WAVES (CONDITION BLUE) 3. THE UNCONCEALING 4. THE LETTING GO 5. THE OUTSIDER TOGETHER 6. THE POWER OF Q 7. URBAN FRICTION 8. THE SHAKESPEARE PARADOX Coda Notes Acknowledgments Index Hell is a place where nothing connects with nothing. —T. S. Eliot, Introduction to Dante’s Inferno INTRODUCTION Procter and Gamble had a problem: it needed a new floor cleaner. In the 1980s, the company had pioneered one lucrative consumer product after another, from pull-up diapers to anti-dandruff shampoo. It h