Jonah Lehrer's Imagine: How Creativity Works

Imagine: How Creativity Works book description: http://www.jonahlehrer.com/

Did you know that the most creative companies have centralized bathrooms? That brainstorming meetings are a terrible idea? That the color blue can help you double your creative output? From the New York Times best-selling author of How We Decide comes a sparkling and revelatory look at the new science of creativity.

Shattering the myth of muses, higher powers, even creative “types,” Jonah Lehrer demonstrates that creativity is not a single gift possessed by the lucky few. It’s a variety of distinct thought processes that we can all learn to use more effectively. Lehrer reveals the importance of embracing the rut, thinking like a child, daydreaming productively, and adopting an outsider’s perspective (travel helps). He unveils the optimal mix of old and new partners in any creative collaboration, and explains why criticism is essential to the process. Then he zooms out to show how we can make our neighborhoods more vibrant, our companies more productive, and our schools more effective.

You’ll learn about Bob Dylan’s writing habits and the drug addictions of poets. You’ll meet a Manhattan bartender who thinks like a chemist, and an autistic surfer who invented an entirely new surfing move. You’ll see why Elizabethan England experienced a creative explosion, and how Pixar’s office space is designed to spark the next big leap in animation. Collapsing the layers separating the neuron from the finished symphony, Imagine reveals the deep inventiveness of the human mind, and its essential role in our increasingly complex world.

The Imagine: How Creativity Works book is an excellent treatise on creativity and the brain. It is filled with fascinating anecdotes, just enough neuroscience to keep it interesting for the layperson, and enough everyday application to make it worth your time. I am the first to admit that I have a weakness for applied psychology books that are heavy on stories, but this is one of the best. What separates this book from other books on creativity is the carefully examined science behind the creative magic. There are other books that focus on creativity and you can learn more techniques from them, but if you want to learn why they really work then this book is a great place to start. The author is a great writer (he could put most modern fiction writers to shame), but the real value is the story and the science behind the imagination.

From Wikipedia  
Jonah Lehrer is a Contributing Editor at Wired and the author of How We Decide and Proust Was a Neuroscientist. He graduated from Columbia University and studied at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. He's written for The New Yorker, Nature, Seed, The Washington Post and The Boston Globe. He's also a Contributing Editor at Scientific American Mind and National Public Radio's Radio Lab.

This biography was provided by the author or their representative.