Imagine: How Creativity Works

How does one measure the imagination? Why are some cities such centres of innovation? Is the internet making us more or less imaginative? What kinds of classroom techniques increase the creativity of children? Does brainstorming work? Even the color of paint on the wall, or the location of a restroom, can have a dramatic impact on creativity.

For too long, we’ve pretended that creativity is an impenetrable biological gift. As a result, we’ve clung to a series of myths about what creativity is and where it comes from. These myths aren’t just misleading—they also interfere with the imagination. That’s why, in addition to elegant experiments and important scientific studies, Imagine is filled with real life examples: Bob Dylan’s writing method and the drug habits of poets, an autistic surfer who invented a new surfing move, a website that solves seemingly impossible problems, and the offices of Pixar. Creativity shouldn’t seem like a process reserved for artists or inventors or other “creative types.” The human mind, after all, has the creative impulse hard-wired into its most essential programming code. This book is about how that happens. It is the story of how we imagine.

Jonah Lehrer is the author of How We Decide and Proust was a Neuroscientist . He is also a contributing editor at Wired , where he writes a blog called The Frontal Cortex, at Scientific American Mind and National Public Radio’s RadioLab. He has written for The New Yorker , Nature , Seed, The Washington Post and The Boston Globe . He lives in New York City .