No Solitary Genius
Creativity can be daunting. If you're like me, you have all these crazy ideas floating around in your head, but most of them just sit there undeveloped. Sometimes it feels like there's some form of outside pressure bearing down on my brain, not letting ideas flow or flourish. I've tried to pinpoint the cause of this on many occasions and come up with no answers. But thanks to a new book, I now see things a bit differently. Keith Sawyer has helped me realize that creativity is "not an individual gift; solitary genius is a myth." Keith's new book is, Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration, and if you or your organization feel creatively stuck, perhaps it is because you are too much like me - you place the burden of creativity on yourself instead of letting it be a collaborative process.
The first thing Keith helped me realize is that my ideas aren't really MY ideas. Just as Darwin "built his work on others' discoveries," the ideas in my head have been built through a series of other peoples' information, research, discoveries, etc. This is one of those things that I already knew, but it never really registered when it came to the creative process. I, like many others, seem to want to own my own creativity, my own ideas, my own sparks. Once I realized, though, that my ideas are nothing more than the expansion of current information, it opened my eyes to what must happen next.
What needs to happen next? I need to talk to, and collaborate with, others. But collaboration can also be a tricky exercise. Most of us think we know how to do it - we often express collaborations' importance - but do we really know how to collaborate. The answer is probably NO. That's where Mr. Sawyer and his new book come in.
Keith "tears down some of the most popular myths about creativity and erects new principles in their place. He reveals that creativity is always collaborative--even when you're alone." In short, he gives us vivid examples of what it means to collaborate, then helps us devise structures and systems that allow for creativity to be a group effort. You all might know just how difficult this can be with multiple ideas and differing personalities all trying to get on the same page. Sawyer simplifies the entire process for us.
Thank you Keith!
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