Imagine how creativity works

Procter and Gamble had a problem: itneeded a new floor cleaner.. The reason for this creative failure wassimple: it was extremely difficult to make astronger floor cleaner that didn’t al

Author of How We Decide

How Creativity Works

“Jonah Lehrer’s new book confirms what hisfans have known all along – that he knowsmore about science than a lot of scientistsand more about writing than a lot ofwriters.”

—Malcolm Gladwell

Did you know that the most creative panies have centralized bathrooms? ?atbrainstorming meetings are a terrible idea?

com-?at the color blue can help you double yourcreative output?

From the best-selling author of How We cide comes a sparkling and revelatory look atthe new science of creativity Shattering themyth of muses, higher powers, even creat-ive “types,” Jonah Lehrer demonstrates thatcreativity is not a single gift possessed by thelucky few It’s a variety of distinct thoughtprocesses that we can all learn to use moreeffectively.

De-Lehrer reveals the importance of embracingthe rut, thinking like a child, and daydream-ing productively, then he takes us out of ourown heads to show how we can make ourneighborhoods more vibrant, our companiesmore productive, and our schools moreeffective

We’ll learn about Bob Dylan’s writing habitsand the drug addiction of poets We’ll meet abartender who thinks like a chemist, and anautistic surfer who invented an entirely newsurfing move We’ll see why Elizabethan

England experienced a creative explosion,and how Pixar designed its office space to getthe most out of its talent Col apsing the lay-ers separating the neuron from the finishedsymphony, Imagine reveals the deep invent-iveness of the human mind, and its essentialrole in our increasingly complex world.

© 2012

Jonah Lehrer is a contributing editor atWired and a frequent contributor to TheNew Yorker He writes the Head Casecolumn for the Wall Street Journal and regu-larly appears on WNYC’s Radiolab His writ-ing has also appeared in Nature, the NewYork Times Magazine, Scientific American,and Outside The author of two previousbooks, Proust Was a Neuroscientist and How

We Decide, he graduated from ColumbiaUniversity and attended Oxford as a Rhodesscholar

Cover illustration © Yulia Brodskaya • Coverdesign by Martha Kennedy • Cover photo-graphy by Michael Leznik Pre-pub mediaevent • Fifteen-city national author tour Na-tional print and online advertising • Promo-tional book trailer Author website: www.jo-nahlehrer.com • On Twitter: @jonahlehrer,

avail-ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF

This copy is supplied for review purposesonly, and for limited distribution As thework is still under review by the author and

the publisher, there may be corrections, letions, or other changes before publication.Not for resale.

de-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 duce selections from this book, write to Per-missions, Houghton Miffl in Harcourt Pub-lishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South,New York, New York 10003

repro-www.hmhbooks.com

Introduction

ALONE

1 BOB DYLAN’S BRAIN

2 ALPHA WAVES (CONDITION BLUE)

Hell is a place where nothing connects with nothing.

—T S Eliot, Introduction to Dante’s Inferno

Procter and Gamble had a problem: itneeded a new floor cleaner In the 1980s, thecompany had pioneered one lucrative con-sumer product after another, from pull-updiapers to anti-dandruff shampoo It haddeveloped color-safe detergent and designed

a quilted paper towel that could absorb 85percent more liquid than other paper towels.These innovations weren’t lucky accidents:Procter and Gamble was deeply invested inresearch and development At the time, thecorporation had more scientists on staff thanany other company in the world, more PhDsthan the faculties of MIT, UC-Berkeley, andHarvard combined

And yet, despite the best efforts of the ists in the household-cleaning division, therewere no new floor products in the pipeline.The company was still selling the same

chem-lemon-scented detergents and cloth mops;consumers were still sweeping up their kit-chens using wooden brooms and metal dust-pans The reason for this creative failure wassimple: it was extremely difficult to make astronger floor cleaner that didn’t also dam-age the floor.

Although Procter and Gamble had investedmillions of dollars in a new generation ofsoaps, these products tended to fail duringthe rigorous testing phase, as they peeled offwood varnishes and irritated delicate skin.The chemists assumed that they had ex-hausted the chemical possibilities

That’s when Procter and Gamble decided totry a new approach The company out-sourced its innovation needs to Continuum,

a design firm with offices in Boston and LosAngeles

“I think P and G came to us because their entists were telling them to give up,” saysHarry West, a leader on the soap team andnow Continuum’s CEO “So they told us tothink crazy, to try to come up withsomething that all those chemists couldn’t.”But the Continuum designers didn’t beginwith molecules.

sci-They didn’t spend time in the lab worryingabout the chemistry of soap Instead, theyvisited people’s homes and watched dozens

of them engage in the tedious ritual of floorcleaning The designers took detailed notes

on the vacuuming of carpets and the ing of kitchens When the notes weren’tenough, they set up video cameras in livingrooms “This is about the most boring foot-age you can imagine,” West says “It’s movies

sweep-of mopping, for God’s sake And we had towatch hundreds of hours of it.” The video-tapes may have been tedious, but they werealso essential, since West and his team were

trying to observe the act of floor cleaningwithout any preconceptions “I wanted toforget everything I knew about mops andsoaps and brooms,” he says “I wanted tolook at the problem as if I’d just stepped off aspaceship from Mars.”

After several months of observation — Westrefers to this as the anthropologist phase —the team members had their first insight Itcame as they watched a woman clean hermop in the bathtub “You’ve got this un-wieldy pole,” West says “And you are splash-ing around this filthy water trying to get thedirt out of a mop head that’s been expresslydesigned to attract dirt It’s an extraordinar-ily unpleasant activity.” In fact, when theContinuum team analyzed the videotapes,they found that people spent more timecleaning their mops than they did cleaningthe floors; the tool made the task more diffi-cult “Once I realized how bad mopping was,

I became quite passionate about floor

cleaning,” West says “I became convincedthat the world didn’t need an improved ver-sion of the mop Instead, it needed a total re-placement for the mop It’s a hopeless piece

of technology.”

Unfortunately, the Continuum designerscouldn’t think of a better cleaning method Itseemed like an impossible challenge Per-haps floor cleaning was destined to be an in-efficient chore

In desperation, the team returned to makinghouse visits, hoping for some errant inspira-tion One day, the designers were watching

an elderly woman sweep some coffeegrounds off the kitchen floor She got out herhand broom and carefully brushed thegrounds into a dustpan But then somethinginteresting happened After the woman wasdone sweeping, she wet a paper towel andwiped it over the linoleum, picking up thelast bits of spilled coffee Although everyone

on the Continuum team had done the samething countless times before, this particularpiece of dirty paper led to a revelation.

What the designers saw in that paper towelwas the possibility of a disposable cleaningsurface “All of a sudden, we realized whatneeded to be done,” says Don Buchner, aContinuum vice president “We needed to in-vent a spot cleaner that people could justthrow away No more cleaning mop heads,

no more bending over in the bathtub, nomore buckets of dirty water That was ourbig idea.” A few weeks later, this epiphanygave rise to their first floor-cleaning proto-type It was a simple thing, just a slenderplastic stick connected to a flat rectangle ofVelcro to which disposable pieces of electro-static tissue were attached A spray mechan-ism was built into the device, allowing people

to wet the floor with a mild soap before theyapplied the wipes (The soap was mostly un-necessary, but it smelled nice.) “You know an

idea has promise when it seems obvious inretrospect,” West says “Why splash arounddirty water when you can just wipe up thedirt?

And why would you bother to clean this face? Why not just throw it away, like a usedpaper towel?”

sur-Procter and Gamble, however, wasn’t thrilledwith the concept The company had de-veloped a billion-dollar market selling con-sumers the latest mops and soaps Theydidn’t want to replace that business with anuntested cleaning product The first focusgroups only reinforced the skepticism WhenProcter and Gamble presented consumerswith a sketch of the new cleaning device, thevast majority of people rejected the concept.They didn’t want to throw out their mops orhave to rely on a tool that was little morethan a tissue on a stick They didn’t like theidea of disposable wipes, and they didn’t

understand how all that dirt would get ontothe moistened piece of paper And so theidea was shelved; Procter and Gamble wasn’tgoing to risk market share on a radical newdevice that nobody wanted.

But the designers at Continuum refused togive up — they were convinced they’d dis-covered the mop of the future After a year ofpleading, they persuaded Procter andGamble to let them show their prototype to afocus group Instead of just reading a de-scription of the product, consumers couldnow play with an “experiential model” clad

in roughly cut plastic The prototype madeall the difference: people were now en-thralled by the cleaning tool, which theytested out on actual floors In fact, theproduct scored higher in focus-group ses-sions than any other cleaning device Procterand Gamble had ever tested “It was offthe charts,” Buchner says “The same peoplewho hated the idea when it was just an idea

now wanted to take the thing home withthem.” Furthermore, tests by Procter andGamble demonstrated that the new productcleaned the floor far better than spongemops, string mops, or any other kinds ofmops According to the corporate scientists,the “tissue on a stick” was one of the most ef-fective floor cleaners ever invented.

In 1997, nearly three years after West and hisdesigners began making their videotapes,Procter and Gamble officially submitted anapplication for a U.S patent In the earlyspring of 1999, the new cleaning tool was in-troduced in supermarkets across the coun-try The product was an instant success: bythe end of the year, it had generated morethan $500 million in sales Numerous imit-ators and spinoffs have since been intro-duced, but the original device continues todominate the post-mop market, taking up anever greater share of the supermarket aisle.Its name is the Swiffer

The invention of the Swiffer is a tale of ativity It’s the story of a few engineers com-ing up with an entirely new cleaning toolwhile watching someone sweep up some cof-fee grounds In that flash of thought, HarryWest and his team managed to think differ-ently about something we all do every day.They were able to see the world as it was — afrustrating place filled with tedious chores —and then envision the world as it might be ifonly there were a better mop That insightchanged floor cleaning forever.

cre-This book is about how such moments pen It is about our most important mentaltalent: the ability to imagine what has neverexisted We take this talent for granted, butour lives are defined by it There is the popsong on the radio and the gadget in yourpocket, the art on the wall and the air condi-tioner in the window There is the medicine

hap-in the bathroom and the chair you are sitthap-ing

in and this book in your hand

And yet, although we are always surrounded

by our creations, there is something foundly mysterious about the creative pro-cess For instance, why did Harry West come

pro-up with the Swiffer concept after watchingthat woman wipe the floor with the papertowel? After all, he’d done it himself on nu-merous occasions

“I can’t begin to explain why the idea arrivedthen,” he says “I was too grateful to ask toomany questions.” The sheer secrecy of cre-ativity — the difficulty in understanding how

it happens, even when it happens to us —means that we often associate breakthroughswith an external force In fact, until the En-lightenment, the imagination was entirelysynonymous with higher powers: being cre-ative meant channeling the muses, givingvoice to the ingenious gods (Inspiration,after all, literally means “breathed upon.”)Because people couldn’t understand creativ-ity, they assumed that their best ideas came

from somewhere else The imagination wasoutsourced.

The deep mysteriousness of creativity alsointimidated scientists It’s one thing to studynerve-reaction times or the mechanics ofsight But how does one measure the imagin-ation? The daunting nature of the subject ledresearchers to mostly neglect it; a recent sur-vey of psychology papers published between

1950 and 2000 revealed that less than 1 cent of them investigated aspects of the cre-ative process Even the evolution of this hu-man talent was confounding Most cognitiveskills have elaborate biological histories, sotheir evolution can be traced over time Butnot creativity — the human imagination has

per-no clear precursors

There is no ingenuity module that got larged in the human cortex, or even a proto-creative impulse evident in other primates

en-Monkeys don’t paint; chimps don’t writepoems; and it’s the rare animal (like the NewCaledonian crow) that exhibits rudimentarysigns of problem solving The birth of cre-ativity, in other words, arrived like any in-sight: out of nowhere.

This doesn’t mean, however, that the ation can’t be rigorously studied Until weunderstand the set of mental events that giverise to new thoughts, we will never under-stand what makes us so special That’s whythis book begins by returning us to the ma-terial source of the imagination: the threepounds of flesh inside the skull WilliamJames described the creative process as

imagin-a “seething cauldron of ideas, whereeverything is fizzling and bob-bing about in astate of bewildering activity.” For the firsttime, we can see the cauldron itself, thatmassive network of electrical cells that allowindividuals to form new connectionsbetween old ideas We can take snapshots of

thoughts in brain scanners and measure theexcitement of neurons as they get closer to asolution The imagination can seem like amagic trick of matter — new ideas emergingfrom thin air — but we are beginning to un-derstand how the trick works.

The first thing this new perspective makesclear is that the standard definition of cre-ativity is completely wrong Ever since theancient Greeks, people have assumed thatthe imagination is separate from other kinds

of cognition But the latest science suggeststhat this assumption is false Instead, cre-ativity is a catchall term for a variety of dis-tinct thought processes (The brain is the ul-timate category buster.) Just consider theprofusion of creative methods that led to theinvention of the Swiffer First, there was theanthropologist phase, those nine months ofcareful observation and tedious videotaping.Although this phase didn’t generate any newideas — the point was to clear the mind of

old ones — it played an essential role in thecreative process, allowing the team to betterunderstand the problem And then, whenWest watched the woman sweep up the cof-fee grounds, there was the classic moment ofinsight, a breakthrough appearing in a frac-tion of a second But that epiphany wasn’tthe end of the process The engineers and de-signers still had to spend years fine-tuningthe design, perfecting the spray nozzle andthe electrostatic wipes “The concept is onlythe start of the process,” West says “Thehardest work always comes after, whenyou’re trying to make the idea real.”

The point is that the Swiffer creative processinvolved multiple forms of creativity This iswhere the tools of modern science prove es-sential, since they allow us to see how thesevarious forms depend on different kinds ofbrain activity The imagination is trans-formed from something metaphysical — aproperty of the gods — into a particular

twitch of cortex Furthermore, this newknowledge is useful: because we finally un-derstand what creativity is, we can begin toconstruct a taxonomy of it, outlining the con-ditions under which each particular mentalstrategy is ideal.

Some acts of imagination are best done in acrowded café sipping espresso, and some arehelped by a cold beer on the couch Some-times we need to let go and improvise on ourown, and sometimes we need the wisdom ofothers Once we know how creativity works,

we can make it work for us

But just because we’ve begun to decipher theanatomy of the imagination doesn’t meanwe’ve unlocked its secret In fact, this is whatmakes the subject of creativity so interesting:

it requires a description from multiple spectives The individual brain, after all, isalways situated in a context and a culture, so

per-we need to blend psychology and sociology,

merging together the outside world and theinside of the mind This is why, althoughImagine begins with the fluttering of neur-ons, it will also explore the influence of thesurrounding environment on creativity Whyare some cities such centers of innovation?What kind of classroom techniques increasethe creativity of children? Is the Internetmaking us more or less imaginative? We’lllook at evidence showing that seemingly ir-relevant factors — such as the color of paint

on the wall, or the location of a restroom —can have a dramatic impact on creativeproduction

Furthermore, because the act of invention isoften a collaborative process — we are in-spired by other people — it’s essential that

we learn to collaborate in the right way Thefirst half of this book focuses on individualcreativity, while the second half shows whathappens when people come together Thanks

to some fascinating new research, such as an

analysis of the partnerships behind sands of Broadway musicals and an investig-ation into the effectiveness of brainstorming,

thou-we can begin to understand why some teamsand companies are so much more creativethan others Their success is not an accident.For most of human history, people have be-lieved that the imagination is inherently in-scrutable, an impenetrable biological gift As

a result, we cling to a series of false mythsabout what creativity is and where it comesfrom These myths don’t just mislead — theyalso interfere with the imagination In addi-tion to looking at elegant experiments andscientific studies, we’ll examine creativity as

it is experienced in the real world We’ll learnabout Bob Dylan’s writing method and thedrug habits of poets

We’ll spend time with a bartender whothinks like a chemist, and an autistic surferwho invented a new surfing move We’ll look

at a website that helps solve seemingly possible problems, and we’ll go behind thescenes at Pixar We’ll watch Yo-Yo Ma im-provise, and we’ll uncover the secrets of con-sistently innovative companies.

im-The point is to collapse the layers of tion separating the nerve cell from the fin-ished symphony, the cortical circuit from thesuccessful product Creativity shouldn’t beseen as something otherworldly It shouldn’t

descrip-be thought of as a process reserved for artistsand inventors and other “creative types.” Thehuman mind, after all, has the creative im-pulse built into its operating system, hard-wired into its most essential programmingcode At any given moment, the brain isautomatically forming new associations, con-

tinually connecting an everyday x to an pected y This book is about how that hap-

unex-pens It is the story of how we imagine

Ch 1 BOB DYLAN’S BRAIN

Always carry a light bulb.

— Bob Dylan

Bob dylan looks bored It’s May of 1965 andhe’s slumped in a quilted armchair at the Sa-voy, a fancy London hotel His Ray-Bans arepulled down low; his eyes stuck in a distantstare The camera turns away — Dylan’sweariness feels like an accusa-tion — andstarts to pan around the room, capturing theragged entourage of folkies and groupies fol-lowing the singer on the final week of hisEuropean tour

For the previous four months, Dylan hadbeen struggling to maintain a grueling per-formance schedule He’d traveled across theNortheast of the United States on a bus,playing in small college towns and big-city

theaters (Dylan played five venues in NewJersey alone.) Then he crossed over to theWest Coast and crammed in a hectic fewweeks of concerts and promotion He’d beenparaded in front of the press and asked anendless series of inane questions, from

“What is the truth?” to “Why is there a cat onthe cover of your last album?” At times,Dylan lost his temper and became obstinatewith reporters “I’ve got nothing to say aboutthese things I write,” he insisted “I just writethem There’s no great message Stop asking

me to explain.” When Dylan wasn’t surly, hewas often sarcastic, telling journalists that hecollected monkey wrenches, that he was born

in Acapulco, and that his songs were inspired

by “chaos, watermelons, and clocks.” Thatlast line almost made him smile

By the time Dylan arrived in London, it wasclear that the trip was taking a toll The sing-

er was skinny from insomnia and pills; hisnails were yellow from nicotine; and his skin

had a ghostly pal-lor (He looked, someonesaid, like an “underfed angel.”) Dylan wastaking too many drugs and was surrounded

by too many people taking drugs In a classicscene from Don’t Look Back, a documentaryabout the 1965 tour by D A Pennebaker, thesinger returns to an empty suite “Welcomehome,” says a member of his entourage “It’sthe first time that this room hasn’t been full

of a bunch of insane lunatics, man, that I canremember It’s the first time it’s been coolaround here.” A few minutes later, there’s aknock on the door The lunatics have arrived.Dylan couldn’t escape from the crowds, so helearned to disappear into himself He packed

a typewriter in with his luggage and couldturn anything into a desk; he searched forwords while surrounded by the chaos of tour.When he got particularly frustrated, hewould tear his work into smaller and smallerpieces, shredding them and throwing them

in the wastebasket (Marianne Faithfull

referred to such moments as “tantrums ofgenius.”) Although Dylan’s creativity re-mained a constant — he wrote because hedidn’t know what else to do — there were in-creasing signs that he was losing interest increating music For the first time, his soloshows felt formulaic, as if he were singingthe lines of someone else He rarely acknow-ledged the audience or paused betweensongs; he seemed to be in a hurry to get off-stage In Don’t Look Back, when a fan tellsDylan she doesn’t like his new single — itfeatured an electric guitar — his reply iswithering: “Oh, you’re one of those I under-stand now.” And then he turns and walksaway.

Before long, it all became too much Whiletouring in England, Dylan decided that hewas leading an impossible life, that this ex-istence couldn’t be sustained The only talent

he cared about — his ceaseless creativity —was being ruined by fame The breaking

point probably came after a brief vacation inPor-tugal, where Dylan got a vicious case offood poisoning The illness forced him tostay in bed for a week, giving the singer arare chance to reflect “I realized I was verydrained,” Dylan would later confess “I wasplaying a lot of songs I didn’t want to play Iwas singing words I didn’t really want to sing It’s very tiring having other people tellyou how much they dig you if you yourselfdon’t dig you.”

In other words, Dylan was sick of his music

He was sick of strumming his acoustic guitarand standing in the spotlight by himself; sick

of the politics and the expectations; sick ofthe burden of being a spokesman People as-sumed that his songs always carried a mes-sage, that his art was really about currentevents But Dylan didn’t want to have anopinion on everything; he had no interest inbeing defined by the sentimental self-right-eousness of “Blowin’ in the Wind.” The

problem was that he didn’t know what to donext: he felt trapped by his past but had noplan for the future The only thing he wassure of was that this life couldn’tlast Whenever Dylan read about himself inthe newspaper, he made the same observa-tion: “God, I’m glad I’m not me,” he said.

“I’m glad I’m not that.”

The last shows were in London at a sold-outRoyal Albert Hall It was here that Dylan toldhis manager he was quitting the music busi-ness He was finished with singing and song-writing and was going to move to a tiny cabin

in Woodstock, New York Although Dylanhad become a pop icon — the prophetic poet

of his generation — he was ready to renounce

it all, to surrender the celebrity and status, if

it meant he might be left alone

Dylan wasn’t bluffing As promised, he turned from his British tour and rode his Tri-umph motorcycle straight out of New York

re-City He was leaving the folk scene of the lage behind, heading upstate to an emptyhouse He was done writing songs — he hadnothing else to say Dylan didn’t even bringhis guitar.

Vil-Every creative journey begins with a lem It starts with a feeling of frustration, thedull ache of not being able to find the an-swer We have worked hard, but we’ve hit thewall We have no idea what to do next

prob-When we tell one another stories about ativity, we tend to leave out this phase of thecreative process We neglect to mentionthose days when we wanted to quit, when webelieved that our problems were impossible

cre-to solve Because such failures contradict theromantic version of events — there is noth-ing triumphant about a false start — we for-get all about them (The failures also remind

us how close we came to having no stories totell.) Instead, we skip straight to the break-throughs We tell the happy endings first.The danger of telling this narrative is that thefeeling of frustration — the act of beingstumped — is an essential part of the creativeprocess Before we can find the answer — be-fore we probably even know the question —

we must be immersed in disappointment,convinced that a solution is beyond ourreach We need to have wrestled with theproblem and lost And so we give up andmove to Woodstock because we will nevercreate what we want to create

It’s often only at this point, after we’vestopped searching for the answer, that theanswer often arrives (The imagination has awicked sense of irony.) And when a solutiondoes appear, it doesn’t come in dribs anddrabs; the puzzle isn’t solved one piece at atime Rather, the solution is shocking in its

completeness All of a sudden, the answer tothe problem that seemed so daunting be-comes incredibly obvious We curseourselves for not seeing it sooner.

This is the clichéd moment of insight thatpeople know so well from stories ofArchimedes in the bathtub, and Isaac New-ton under the apple tree It’s the kind ofmental process described by Coleridge andEinstein, Picasso and Mozart When peoplethink about creative breakthroughs, theytend to imagine them as incandescentflashes, like a light bulb going on inside thebrain

These tales of insight all share a few essentialfeatures that scientists use to define the “in-sight experience.” The first stage is the im-passe: Before there can be a breakthrough,there has to be a block Before Bob Dylancould reinvent himself, writing the best