How to Fly a Horse: The Secret History of Creation, Invention, and Discovery

leading to slew of amazing opportunities. He was a leader at three hugely …
CREDIBILITYKevin Ashton was an Executive Director and visiting engineer at MIT, where he led work on computing for computing in the future, which he called ‘the Internet of Things’. This term is now widely used to describe how computers interface with computers, leading to slew of amazing opportunities. He was a leader at three hugely successful technology start –ups.This book is not about the internet of things, but I mention his credentials only to emphasise that the man is highly credible. This book is about creativity, the characteristic so needed in a fast changing business environment. It affects our life expectancy, our height and weight and gait, our way of life, where we live , and the things we think and do.Listen, and you hear creation. even the bark of a dog, a wolf changed by millennia of selective breeding by humans;We cannot know enough about it. Read on…Titles available in today’s bookstores include 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative, 39 Keys to Creativity 52 Ways to Get and Keep Your Creativity Flowing, 62 Exercises to Unlock Your Most Creative Ideas , 100 What -Ifs of Creativity , and 250 Exercises to Wake Up Your BrainTHE MYTHMozart’s greatest symphonies, concertos , and operas came to him complete when he was alone and in a good mood. He needed no tools to compose them. Once he had finished imagining his masterpieces, all he had to do was write them down.But there is a problem . Mozart did not write this letter . It is a forgery. This was first shown in 1856 by Mozart’s biographer Otto Jahn and has been confirmed by other scholars since.He sketched his compositions, revised them, and sometimes got stuck. He could not work without a piano or harpsichord.Geniuses have dramatic moments of insight where great things and thoughts are born whole. Poems are written in dreams . Symphonies are composed complete.The question being investigated was “How do the great men do it?” and the answer had the residue of medieval divine intervention.Even though his talent and a lifetime of practice made him fast and fluent , his work was exactly that: work.CREATIVITY IS WORKWork is the soul of creation. Work is getting up early and going home late, turning down dates and giving up weekends, writing and rewriting, reviewing and revising, rote and routine, staring down the doubt of the blank page, beginning when we do not know where to start, and not stopping when we cannot go onThere was no magic, and there had been few flashes of inspiration— just tens of thousands of hours of work.THINKING IS LIKE WALKINGThis is one reason the creativity myth is so terribly wrong. Creating is not rare. We are all born to do it.There is no “creative thinking,” just as there is no “creative walking.” Creation is a result—a place thinking may lead us. Before we can know how to create, we must know how to think.STEPS, NOT LEAPSThe best artists, scientists, engineers, inventors, entrepreneurs , and other creators are the ones who keep taking steps by finding new problems, new solutions, and then new problems again.Ordinary thinking works.to Einstein, who was stuck for a year while developing the special theory of relativity In Einstein’s own words: “I was led to it by steps.”“The major finding of this study is that no evidence of incubation was apparent under any condition, even under those where its appearance would seem most likely.”Most researchers now regard incubation as folk psychology— a popular belief but wrong.Karl Dunker showed, all creation, whether painting, plane, or phone, has the same foundation: gradual steps where a problem leads to a solution that leads to a problem . Creating is the result of thinking like walking. Left foot, problem. Right foot, solution. Repeat until you arrive. It is not the size of your strides that determines your success but how many you take.All great discoveries, even ones that look like transforming leaps, are short hops.INCUBATIONBrainstorming: Researchers in Minnesota tested this with scientists and advertising executives from the 3M Company. . In every case, four people working individually generated between 30 to 40 percent more ideas than four people working in a group. Their results were of a higher quality, too:independent judges assessed the work and found that the individuals produced better ideas than the groups.The conclusion: “Group brainstorming, over a wide range of group sizes, inhibits rather than facilitates creative thinking.”DON’T BE NEGATIVE!Another assumption of brainstorming is that suspending judgment is better than assessing ideas as they appear.Half of the groups were told to refrain from criticism and half were told to criticize as they went along.both groups produced the same number of good ideas.WORKING ALONESteve Wozniak, Steve Jobs’s cofounder at Apple and the inventor of its first computer, offers the same advice: “Work alone. You’re going to be best able to design revolutionary products and features if you’re working on your own. Not on a committee. Not on a team.”Creation is execution, not inspiration.HOW TO FLY A HORSE the Wright brothers on the path to the world’s first flight. They saw an airplane as “a bicycle with wings.”The Wrights solved the problem by studying birds. A bird is buffeted by wind when it glides . It balances by raising one wingtip and lowering the other.The Wrights had started flying as a hobby and with little interest in “the scientific side of it.” But they were ingenious and easily intrigued. Bird flight, propellorsOrville and Wilbur Wright did not leap into the sky. They walked there one step at a time.INTELLIGENCE AND CREATIVITYWhat do they have?Behavioral neurologist Richard Caselli says, “Despite great qualitative and quantitative differences between individuals, the neurobiologic principles of creative behavior are the same from the least to the most creative among us.”The data currently available about the processes involved in creative and non-creative thinking show no particular differences between the two.Torrance had recorded the IQ of all his participants. His results showed no connection between creative ability and general intelligence. psychologist Ellis Paul Torrance administered a set of tests later known as the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinkingspecial class of problem-solving activity characterized by novelty, unconventionality, persistence, and difficulty in problem formulation.MISCELLANEOUSthe stories reveal a pattern for how humans make new things,Creating is not magic but work.CREATING IS ORDINARY – Creating is not extraordinary, even if its results sometimes are. Creation is human. It is all of us. It is everybody.COUNTING CREATORS – giving credit to individuals is misleading. Creation is a chain reaction:What the numbers show is something else: when we start counting creators, we find that a lot of people create.Anything we create is a tool —a fabrication with purpose.Then came by far the most important moment in human history—the day one member of the species looked at a tool and thought, “I can make this better.” The descendants of this individual are called Homo sapiens sapiens. They are our ancestors. They are us. What the human race created was creation itself.A MAZE WHERE YOU FAIL AND FAIL TO SUCCEEDThere are no shortcuts to creation. The path is one of many steps, neither straight nor winding but in the shape of a maze. Judah Folkman walked the maze. It is easy to enter and difficult to stay.Until he saved Jennifer’s life, Folkman described his work as “a series of repetitive failures.”“If your idea succeeds, everybody says you’re persistent . If it doesn’t succeed, you’re stubborn.” Folkman saved more lives after Jennifer’s.he was lauded as a genius.Folkman could not get published, funded, or perform surgery. surgery. It was the same reason other scientists called him a crazy charlatan on a hopeless search, walked out of his talks, said he was working on dirt, and told researchers to avoid him.Stephen King,for example, has published more than eighty books, most of them fiction. 7 He says he writes two thousand words a day. 8 Between the beginning of 1980 and the end of 1999, he published thirty-nine new books, totaling more than five million words. 9 But writing two thousand words a day for twenty years yields fourteen million words: King must erase almost two words for every one he keeps.DysonIt had to be capable of extracting house dust particles about a millionth of a meter wide.It took more than five thousand prototypes, constructed over five years, to create a working cyclone-based vacuum cleaner. He says , “I’m a huge failure because I made 5,126 mistakes.” 18TIMEManagement writer Peter Drucker: “One of the secrets of productivity (in which I believe whereas I do not believe in creativity) is to have a VERY BIG waste paper basket to take care of ALL invitations such as yours—productivity in my experience consists of NOT doing anything that helps the work of other people but to spend all one’s time on the work the Good Lord has fitted one to do, and to do well.”Time is the raw material of creation.There are few overnight successes and many up-all-night successes.Saying no has more creative power than ideas, insights, and talent combined.The math of time is simple: you have less than you think and need more than you know.Readability Light –+– SeriousInsights High –+– LowPractical High –+– Low*Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy and is the author of Strategy that Works.

This book is a brilliant read because of its content and the for the way it is written. It packs an emotional punch along with its intellectual credentials.Seldom have I seen such a mastery of facts alongside a Hemingwway-esque presentation.I can only echo what someone said of Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions: the book reads like “an unbroken series of aphorisms”.Tour de force.

Interesting book, combines many perspectives on creativity and creation, it was a really nice read and i can recommend it!

This is a brilliant book. For anyone involved in creative pursuits it is a recommended read. The real message is that we can all learn from other people involved in similar pursuits and persistence is the key to success.