Myth of the Muse, The. Douglas Reeves

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      INTRODUCTION

       THE CREATIVITY IMPERATIVE

      Much of history is divided into epochs based on the development of human innovation: the rise of agriculture, written language, philosophy, geometry, the printing press, the steam engine, the transistor, vaccines, and the Internet, just to name a few. These innovations and many others have fundamentally shifted not only our worldview but also our capacity to grow. Cultures are defined by their art, music, and literature. Things that are useful—and perhaps more important, that are meaningful, beautiful, and good—can be seen as an outgrowth of the creative process. Creativity is at the heart of the solutions to our most intractable challenges and is, therefore, essential for survival.

      Readers would doubtless do anything to spare their children, grandchildren, and complete strangers of future generations the pain of disease, hunger, violence, and oppression that are part of the daily lives of too many people today. Creative solutions in medicine, government, and technology have made modern life immeasurably better than that of our ancestors. But now the torch has passed, and we are not merely the beneficiaries of creativity but the authors of it. In particular, society now depends on creative solutions to address competing demands. For example, how do we cure devastating illnesses and feed the hungry while providing the resources to sustain a growing population? How do we address the global challenge of climate change while still encouraging economic growth and technological innovation? How do we fight global terrorism while respecting commitments to democratic ideals and privacy rights? If the lesson of the 20th century was as Alan Deutschman (2007) asserts, change or die, then the lesson of the 21st century is create or die—and die miserably. And yet, in few areas of human endeavor is there a wider gap between aspiration and reality than in creativity.

The Creativity Chasm

      In his 2011 State of the Union Address, President Barack Obama touted the importance of creativity, saying, “In America, innovation doesn’t just change our lives. It is how we make our living” (The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, 2011). A 2010 IBM study of more than fifteen hundred chief executive officers shows that creativity ranked number one on the list of qualities that these CEOs valued in their employees (IBM, 2010). John Hattie’s landmark synthesis of more than nine hundred meta-analyses (2012; Hattie & Yates, 2014) concludes that creativity is strongly linked to academic achievement, particularly when instruction in creativity takes place. The themes that surface again and again from these diverse realms of world politics, business, and education emphasize that innovation and creativity in science and politics, and collaboration among nations and individuals, will be essential for our civilization to conquer future challenges, from poverty to climate change.

      The value placed on creativity is well documented, but the reality is that the deck is stacked against the creative process. Creative business leaders are tolerated as long as they avoid СКАЧАТЬ