George Newman

If you look at the emergence of great ideas throughout history, you know, this idea that the way that we find creative inspiration is kind of locking ourselves away and waiting for that light bulb moment, that actually turns out to be kind of the exact opposite from what works.

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Certainly that's how it feels, right?

That we kind of have these light bulb moments, a lightning bolt strikes us out of nowhere.

But, you know, I'm a cognitive scientist.

I spent my career trying to understand creativity and where it comes from.

And these kind of mysteries about how do great ideas happen

And what the research shows and looking at a lot of anecdotes from history as well is that even though it can kind of feel in the moment like this lightning bolt or epiphany, that there actually is a lot of work going on behind the scenes preceding those moments, that it's a lot of trial and error.

and experimentation and false starts and all of that sort of thing that eventually leads us to a great idea.

So there's lots and lots of exploration that is happening behind the scenes.

And I talk about kind of the power of thinking about ourselves more like creative explorers rather than creative geniuses.

Totally.

And, you know, I mean, history has a funny way of kind of smoothing over all of those details.

You know, oftentimes, there are many collaborators that we don't see behind the scenes, many people working on the project.

Oftentimes, people are borrowing from ideas and building upon the ideas that have come before them.

You know, this idea that the way that we find creative inspiration is kind of locking ourselves away and waiting for that light bulb moment, that actually turns out to be kind of the exact opposite from what works.

That's such a fascinating question.

And qualitatively, I think what the research shows us is that it leans much more heavily on the environment that people find themselves in.

The ideas that are kind of swirling around at their time