Imagine: How Creativity Works - Hardcover

Lehrer, Jonah

3.95

48,919 ratings by Goodreads

9780547386072: Imagine: How Creativity Works

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0547386079 ISBN 13: 9780547386072

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012

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Did you know that the most creative companies have centralized bathrooms? That brainstorming meetings are a terrible idea? That the color blue can help you double your creative output?

From the New York Times 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, daydreaming productively, and adopting an outsider’s perspective (travel helps). He unveils the optimal mix of old and new partners in any creative collaboration, and explains why criticism is essential to the process. Then he zooms out to show how we can make our neighborhoods more vibrant, our companies more productive, and our schools more effective.

You’ll learn about Bob Dylan’s writing habits and the drug addictions of poets. You’ll meet a Manhattan bartender who thinks like a chemist, and an autistic surfer who invented an entirely new surfing move. You’ll see why Elizabethan England experienced a creative explosion, and how Pixar’s office space is designed to spark the next big leap in animation.

Collapsing the layers separating the neuron from the finished symphony, Imaginereveals the deep inventiveness of the human mind, and its essential role in our increasingly complex world.

http://www.jonahlehrer.com/

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Review:

"Imagine should appeal to everyone, not just because of Lehrer's compelling writing style but also because it puts paid to the idea that creativity is a gift enjoyed only by the lucky few. We can all be more creative, we just need to know how. This book will show you" (New Scientist)

"This is an inspiring and engaging book that reveals creativity as less a sign of rare genius than a natural human potential" (Economist)

"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, author of The Tipping Point)

"Jonah Lehrer may be the most talented explainer of science that we've got. His engrossing investigation of creativity and its source makes Imagine his best book yet" (Joshua Foer, author of Moonwalking with Einstein)

"Not many writers can make plausible links among musicians Bob Dylan, Yo-Yo Ma and David Byrne, animators at Pixar, neuroscientists at MIT, an amateur bartender in New York, entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and Israeli army reservists . . . But Jonah Lehrer is such a writer-reporter, who weaves compelling and surprising connections based on detailed investigation and deep understanding . . . Reading his book exercises the imagination; the rest is up to us" (Washington Post)

"Lehrer is a thrilling multifaceted narrator...what Lehrer achieves in this book is a roaming yet cohesive description of the creative process, applied across disciplines" (Observer)

"An ecumenical hodgepodge of sociology, neuroscience and motivational examples that should be read by anyone with an interest in how human creativity works" (Kevin Power Sunday Business Post)

"Lehrer unpicks the triggers that bring about bouts of creativity, be it Bob Dylan's writing or an engineer inventing the Post-it note. It could improve your chances of coming up with an idea of your own" (Esquire Magazine)

"The must-read book of the year for chief executives and wannabe entrepreneurs everywhere, a modern business bible for the enlightened boss" (Murad Ahmed The Times)

"This compelling discussion of the creative process speaks to our scientific age" (Stephen Cave Financial Times)

Book Description:

Where does creativity come from? And how do you harness it?

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