Where Does Creativity Come From?

While I'm pontificating on the subject of creativity, I might as well explain how one goes about being creative. Some people confuse creativity with intellectual anarchy; they figure that, in the world of creative thought, one idea is just as good as another. Not so; creativity is serious business and you don't attain high levels of creativity by random daydreaming.

Our minds are associative; new ideas are generated by combining old ideas in novel ways. This combinatorial process is not a simple additive one; you don't jam two ideas together any old way to create a new idea. Instead, they go together in pattern fashion. Consider this highly schematic representation of the concepts in your head (see Figure 7.1).

7.1. Mental organization.

Now, any substantial idea is really a collection of closely related concepts, like what is shown in Figure 7.2.

7.2. A single extended idea.

The trick in creativity is to notice that there's another idea in the pattern, an idea that closely resembles the first idea (see Figure 7.3).

7.3. Two analogous ideas.

A new idea can be created by comparing the outer connections of idea #1 with the outer connections of idea #2 (see Figure 7.4).

7.4. Comparing the outer connections of the two different ideas.

This comparison permits us to make logical connections by noting similarities. In this example, we might say, "Concept A is to the Idea #1 as Concept B is to Idea #2, so perhaps I can think about Concept B as if it were Concept A."