best books to read 2017 about creativity

Q4) Jane Jacobs believed that cities that are more creativeĪ) have to struggle to retain their creativityī) have to ‘squelch’ unproductive people and promote creative onesĬ) have leaders and institutions that do not block creativityĭ) typically do not start off as creative hubs Q3) The central idea of this passage is thatĪ) social interaction is necessary to nurture creativityī) creativity and ideas are gradually declining in all societiesĬ) the creativity divide is widening in societies in line with socio-economic trendsĭ) more people should work in jobs that engage their creative faculties Q2) The author uses ‘ironic’ in the third paragraph to point out thatĪ) people need social contact rather than isolation to nurture their creativityī) institutions created to promote creativity eventually stifle itĬ) the larger the creative population in a city, the more likely it is to be stifledĭ) large bureaucracies and institutions are the inevitable outcome of successful cities Q1) In the author’s view, cities promote human creativity for all the following reasons EXCEPT that theyĪ) contain spaces that enable people to meet and share new ideas.ī) expose people to different and novel ideas, because they are home to varied groups of people.Ĭ) provide the financial and institutional networks that enable ideas to become reality.ĭ) provide access to cultural activities that promote new and creative ways of thinking. But we still have a long way to go if we want to build a truly creative society that supports and rewards the creativity of each and every one of us. It’s flourishing is all around us – in science and technology, arts and culture, in our rapidly revitalizing cities. That leaves a group that I term “the other 66 percent,” who toil in low-wage rote and rotten jobs - if they have jobs at all - in which their creativity is subjugated, ignored or wasted.Ĭreativity itself is not in danger.

According to my own estimates, roughly a third of us across the United States, and perhaps as much as half of us in our most creative cities – are able to do work which engages our creative faculties to some extent, whether as artists, musicians, writers, techies, innovators, entrepreneurs, doctors, lawyers, journalists or educators – those of us who work with our minds. She called them “squelchers.”Ĭreativity (or the lack of it) follows the same general contours of the great socio-economic divide – our rising inequality – that plagues us. But some cities had more than their shares of leaders, people and institutions that blocked out that creativity. All cities, she said, were filled with creative people that’s our default state as people. She said, essentially, that the question was an easy one.

I once asked the great urbanist Jane Jacobs what makes some places more creative than others. By the time we are adults, our creativity has been wrung out of us. When 280,000 25-year-olds took the test, just 2 percent passed. When they were 8 to 10, only 32 percent passed the same test, and only 10 percent at 13 to 15. When the children were between 3 and 5 years old, 98 percent achieved positive scores. The education expert Sir Ken Robinson points to a 1968 study reporting on a group of 1,600 children who were tested over time for their ability to think in out-of-the-box ways. Creativity is disruptive schools and organizations are regimented, standardized and stultifying. It’s the very institutions that we build to manage, exploit and perpetuate the fruits of creativity - our big bureaucracies, and sad to say, too many of our schools. With their infrastructure for finance, organization and trade, they allow those ideas to be swiftly actualized.Īs for what staunches creativity, that’s easy, if ironic. Our biggest creative breakthroughs come when people learn from, compete with, and collaborate with other people.Ĭities are the true fonts of creativity… With their diverse populations, dense social networks, and public spaces where people can meet spontaneously and serendipitously, they spark and catalyze new ideas. The big myth is that creativity is the province of great individual geniuses. What fosters creativity? More than anything else: the presence of other creative people. As anyone who has ever spent any time with children knows, every single human being is born creative every human being is innately endowed with the ability to combine and recombine data, perceptions, materials and ideas, and devise new ways of thinking and doing. Choose the best answer to each question.Ĭreativity is at once our most precious resource and our most inexhaustible one. The passage below is accompanied by a set of six questions.

Best books to read 2017 about creativity