Imagine: How Creativity Works.

Jonah Lehrer’s Imagine: How Creativity Works is a fantastic read that covers the subject of human creativity from two different but equally critical angles: The neurology of creativity, or how we can maximize our own individual creativity; and the sociology of creativity, or how managers can increase creativity in their groups or companies. The small miracle of the book is that Lehrer conveys all of this information – I wouldn’t call them answers, but there are enough ideas here to help you create a plan of action – in a way that’s largely entertaining by building almost the entire book around a series of real-world anecdotes, covering topics as wide-ranging as Shakespeare, Pixar, Innocentive, W.H. Auden, a programmer-turned-bartender named Don Lee, and Bob Dylan.

What Lehrer means by “creativity” is less about artistic creativity (although, as you can see, he uses many examples from the arts) and more about out-of-the-box thinking: Ideas that veer away from conventional wisdom and allow people (or groups) to solve previously unsolvable problems or to create works or products of enduring value. The book opens with the development of a new cleaning tool by Proctor and Gamble, created when that company decided to try to develop an improvement to the household mop. It took an outside agency to be willing to step out of the forest long enough to realize that improving the mop was an inferior solution to replacing the mop entirely – and P&G rejected that agency’s idea for a new product for a full year before finally relenting. (I don’t think I’m spoiling anything by revealing that the product, as you have likely guessed by now, was the Swiffer.) Creativity is stifled by groupthink, territorial behavior, and focus on short-term results, but it is also stifled by our own prefrontal cortices and by bad advice about the value of brainstorming. Lehrer tears each one of these obstacles down in turn and discusses in open-ended terms how we might surmount them.

Each of the book’s eight full chapters revolves around multiple real-world examples, often not obviously connected, that state the case before Lehrer states it himself, after which he’ll refer to studies by psychologists or neuroscientists on things like what happens to creativity when the prefrontal cortex is shut off. (Nothing in the book was more interesting to me than Lehrer’s explanation of the “fourth-grade slump,” referring to the age around which kids suddenly lose much of their creativity, no longer creating wild and abstract or unusual art because their prefrontal cortices have developed to the point where they feel more self-conscious about the quality of the work they produce.) He also explains why Phoenix lags behind much smaller cities in producing patents, a proxy he uses often as a measure of creativity, and why discussions with open and frank criticism produce substantially more ideas than traditional brainstorming sessions where criticism of others’ ideas, no matter how profoundly stupid they are, is forbidden.

The chapter that mentions Pixar discusses, among other factors, the benefit of proximity in idea generation. Pixar’s headquarters apparently includes just one set of restrooms, so employees from all areas of the company are effectively forced to run into each other en route (as well as in a large open area in the center of the building). I doubt I could prove this theory, but perhaps baseball front offices have, over their history, been less creative because so many critical employees don’t work out of the main office? The scouting director and player development director are just as likely to live elsewhere, so while the GM talks to those two executives regularly, even daily, the calls will be event- or agenda-driven, not the kind of casual conversation that occurs in an office setting (preferably an open one) that can spur unexpected ideas because no one is rushing to get off the phone.

One quibble is that Lehrer quotes Yo-Yo Ma referring to Julia Child dropping a roast chicken on the floor during a television show and brushing it off as if nothing had happened, yet doesn’t correct him; this incident, often-cited, never happened. Child did once flip a potato pancake out of a skillet on to the counter, joking about lacking “the courage of my convictions,” but the chicken/floor story is a myth. You don’t mess with Julia.

I’ve already recommended this book to a number of people who run departments because I think it can, or should, dramatically change how people manage their reports or companies. Lehrer argues that it’s not an accident that Pixar and 3M have had such extended runs of creative success, just as it’s not an accident that Shakespeare should rise from humble beginnings to become the greatest playwright in history. We can make ourselves more creative, and we can make our groups more creative, if we understand the science and the psychology behind creativity. Imagine is the first step.

UPDATE: Unfortunately, it appears that Lehrer fabricated many of the quotes attributed to Bob Dylan in this book. While that doesn’t make the book any less valuable in my eyes, I could certainly understand readers choosing not to read it for the hit its credibility has taken.