Are you one of those bibliophiles who have an appetite for
applied neuroscience and cognition without getting intimidated by the technical
complexities of the subject?
Then, “Imagine: How Creativity Works” is something that you
must never miss out on. But, this review would be biased if I hide the fact
that this book was later withdrawn from the bookstores. Despite being a best
seller for many weeks, it faced such an unfortunate end after Jonah Lehrer lost
his credibility on charges of plagiarism and recycling his works for The New
Yorker. I came to know about this only months
after I read the book and instantly fell in love with it. So, this review is
written from the standpoint of a curious reader keeping all those controversies
aside.
“Hell is a place where nothing connects with nothing”
Lehrer aptly uses this quote of T.S.Elliot to set the
context and directly plunges into the discussion of an interesting case study.
It is about how a group of designers working for Proctor and Gamble got
epiphanies by repeatedly observing the users of the product ( Swiffer). This
introduction made me curious about the book and gave a sense of reassurance to commit
myself to it.
The entire book is put together in such a way that it hints
that the process of being creative starts from the personal level and moves on
to the social level at large. There is no detailed analysis of the contents of
every chapter of this book being done here because that would spoil the fun of
reading it (if you are taking this suggestion seriously and planning to read it
too…)
Rather than doing an introspection of Lehrer’s mind and the
controversies surrounding the book, I would like to lay emphasis on some
lessons on creativity that I got from this book:
-
Perseverance
matters: One of the things that he
wants the reader to understand is that creative juices start flowing only when
you get over the phase of extreme frustration. After this, new association are
being made by the brain and the best ideas begin to pop up. (The main purpose
of including Bob Dylan’s anecdote might be for conveying this).
-
Wandering
towards Insights: A constrained mind
is an enemy of creativity. Have you ever got amazing solutions to something
that you were stuck up with while in a shower? It was not by a fluke or chance! A relaxed
mind enables you to enter the alpha state where remote associations are
possible. An appropriate example of the
work culture at 3M has been given to complement this. According to this book, 15% of the office
hours of people at 3M is meant to for coming up with speculative ideas.
-
Broaden
the Library: An exposure to a wide
array of ideas and things would foster creativity. Creative power of the mind
is augmented by an act of combining ideas, concepts, experiences and their
contextual relevance when applied to a given problem. Lehrer calls this as “conceptual blending”. The
anecdote of how Dick Drew invented the masking tape is a nice example to explain
this.
-
Function
of Focus: Why do many poets and mathematicians rely on drugs to get things done? Lehrer suggests that all these are chemical shortcuts to initiate
brain activity to gather attention. Although
wandering and daydreaming can be helpful to get something out of the blue,
focus plays an integral role for local associations. The power of attention and working memory is
quite important while refining an idea and taking a pragmatic step towards an
insight.
-
Let is
loose: This is one of the favourite lessons
that I took away from this book as I started applying it in my ideation process.
Though, it is good to have knowledge about a wide variety of fields, it can at
times become a hindrance too. The
knowledge can add too many constraints to the thought process. So, spontaneity
is the key! This concept is the first
thing that the students at Improv Comedy Schools are taught.
- Getting
the Right Mix: This concept is
related to creativity in a group. According to this book, a diversified team of
experts and novices in right proportion works magic and enhances creativity.
The experts know the problem in and out and the amateurs add a completely new
dimension to the process. Since they are new to the field, they look at things
from an outsider’s perspective and ask questions that can be extremely
insightful.
This list is not a complete one but just a few key things
that stayed with me even many days after reading the book. I was not happy with certain parts of the book even though I was convinced with most of it. I felt Lehrer could have been a little easy on bashing the "brainstorming" process. Apart from that, there were instances when his rhetorical approach was overdone and became distracting. Although, a compilation of sources and citations have been given at the end of the book, the facts and examples could have been more grounded.
Unlike any other
books in this genre, this is more than just an explanation of how creativity
works. It is rather an anthology of insightful stories and interesting pieces
of information taken from different fields and time periods. On the whole, this
book was well-paced with every page spiced up with elements for curiosity to turn over and
keep going till the end of the book. It
was quite an informative read and worth the time spent in completing it.
RATINGS : 3.5 /5
January 17, 2016 at 2:25 AM
looks like an interesting read. thanks for sharing!