The invention of the Swiffer is a tale of
creativity. It’s the story of a few engineers coming up with an entirely
new cleaning tool while watching someone sweep up some coffee grounds.
In that flash of thought, Harry West and his team managed to think
differently about something we all do every day. They were able to see
the world as it was—a frustrating place filled with tedious chores—and
then envision the world as it might be if only there were a better mop.
That insight changed floor cleaning forever
It’s often only at this point, after we’ve
stopped searching for the answer, that the answer arrives. (The
imagination has a wicked sense of irony.) And when a solution does
appear, it doesn’t come in dribs and drabs; the puzzle isn’t solved one
piece at a time. Rather, the solution is shocking in its completeness.
Surprisingly, those students diagnosed with
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) got significantly higher
scores. White then measured levels of creative achievement in the real
world, asking the students if they’d ever won prizes at juried art shows
or been honored at science fairs. In every single domain, from drama to
engineering, the students with ADHD had achieved more. Their attention
deficit turned out to be a creative blessing.
Insights, after all, come from the overlap
between seemingly unrelated thoughts. They emerge when concepts are
transposed, when the rules of one place are shifted
The benefit of such circulation is that it
increases conceptual blending, allowing people to look at their most
frustrating problems from a fresh perspective. Instead of trying to
invent a new tack, imagine a roll of sticky paper; instead of trying to
improve the battery performance of a laptop, think about the refractory
properties of its light bulbs.
People need to be reminded that creativity
is a verb, a very time-consuming verb. It’s about taking an idea in
your head, and transforming that idea into something real. And that’s
always going to be a long and difficult process. If you’re doing it
right, it’s going to feel like work
This helps explain why young children are so
effortlessly creative: their censors don’t yet exist. But then the brain
matures and we become too self-conscious to improvise, too worried
about saying the wrong thing, or playing the wrong note, or falling off
the surfboard. It’s at this point that the infamous “fourth-grade slump”
in creativity sets in, as students suddenly stop wanting to make art in
the classroom
But sometimes that’s not enough: we need to
leave behind everything. One of the most surprising (and pleasurable)
ways of cultivating an outsider perspective is through travel, getting
away from the places we spend most of our time. The reason travel is so
useful for creativity involves a quirk of cognition in which problems
that feel close get contemplated in a more literal manner. This means
that when we are physically near the source of the problem, our thoughts
are automatically constricted, bound by a more limited set of
associations. While this habit can be helpful—it allows us to focus on
the facts at hand—it also inhibits the imagination.
Furthermore, there’s evidence that group
creativity is becoming more necessary. Because we live in a world of
very hard problems—all the low-hanging fruit is gone—many of the most
important challenges exceed the capabilities of the individual
imagination. As a result, we can find solutions only by working with
other people.
When children are allowed to create, they’re
able to develop the sophisticated talents that are required for success
in the real world. Instead of learning how to pass a standardized test,
they learn how to cope with complexity and connect ideas, how to bridge
disciplines and improve their first drafts
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