so we’re gonna have some fun so my talk
is engineering creativity and you know I
went through the word engineering here
because we’re at Georgia Tech so I
thought you know you’d pay attention
more so it’s good but I have a book
coming out they’ve been working on for
three years all about how anyone can
have moments of creative genius for the
book I interviewed about 25 living
creative geniuses and tons of academics
who studied creativity and the thing I
found is when you actually look at
creativity we think of it as something
very different than it actually is so
let me tell you what I mean now
creativity for many of us is one of
those things that you know it when you
see it it’s you know you look at that
painting or like oh that’s creative
versus when you look at one of my
paintings you go hmm not so much but
there’s some people who are just so good
at this there’s some people the creative
geniuses we think of Pablo Picasso
Mozart Beyonce that are really really
good at this you know we think about
over here we have Oprah Elon Musk so you
know Steve Jobs they’re able to create
product after product book after book
song after song that’s incredibly
successful right there are the true
creative geniuses of our world of course
you also have to remember Taylor Swift
so what’s interesting about creativity
is that it’s very intertwined with
creative genius it’s hard to talk about
creativity without talking about the
people who actually execute on it one of
the most famous creative geniuses is
Paul McCartney he has the number one
most number one singles of any
songwriter ever more than John Lennon
and he wrote the song yesterday
yesterday is the most recorded song in
history but what’s interesting about the
song yesterday is how he came up with
the idea see Paul McCartney one day just
woke up with it he literally talked
about this in interviews he says I woke
up one morning with a tune in my head
and thought hey I don’t know this tune
or do I this creative genius literally
woke up with the most recorded song in
history he was actually so worried about
this that he’d accidentally maybe
plagiarized
that he went around for weeks it would
actually hum it to people and say hey
have you heard this before I was like
I’m suspicious and this is also true you
could google it but he didn’t have
lyrics so he used this placeholder
lyrics this is true I’m gonna sing it
for you
scrambled eggs oh my baby how I love
your rings did it’ll I believe in
scrambled eggs the crowd goes wild this
is true so we have these stories of
creative geniuses creating these amazing
things and just seemed so easy right
they have these flashes these moments
that we normies don’t have so this is
what I call in the book the inspiration
theory of creativity and it’s the main
way that in Western culture we think of
creativity there’s four main elements
the first that’s individual centric
right it’s Steve Jobs
it’s Elon Musk it’s Beyonce second it’s
easy right Paul McCartney literally
wakes up with this he’s not struggling
right we all know the story about JK
Rowling was on a train and she did for
Harry Potter and she wrote it on a
napkin
Thurs it’s overwhelming right it
literally kind of ripples through them
inspirations like this sort of physical
force and forth and finally they’re kind
of weird they’re a little bit manic
they’re maybe a little neurotic they’re
maybe a little bit odd and what’s
interesting about this is that’s also
unattainable right this notion of
creativity means if we weren’t born with
it if we weren’t born with the ability
to just wake up with songs then how are
we gonna actually learn to be more
creative a study done by Adobe found
that only 25% of us think that we’re
living up to our creative potential it’s
pretty depressing I know he’s really
cute
so the question I had and one of the
questions attacks on the book is is this
actually true do you actually have to be
born with this sort of amazing mystical
genius to actually be creative so what
if this wasn’t true there’s a lot of
studies that dig into this and what’s
amazing I’m gonna talk a little bit this
is the research shows this is actually
wildly different than the truth the
truth is actually a creativity is a
skill it’s a muscle it’s something you
get better at let me show you one of the
studies so for this study we’re gonna go
to Austria and in Austria there are some
researchers at a university and they had
a pretty basic question do you have to
be an IQ genius to be a creative genius
and so how they did this was it took a
bunch of students and they hasn’t do an
IQ test then they also had them do
what’s called a divergent thinking test
it’s one that academically valid ways to
measure creative potential the whole
idea was okay if you have to be a genius
to be creative there’d be a correlation
the higher the IQ the more creative you
would be but here’s where they found
there was a correlation but only up
until a point C IQ is on a standard bell
curve you have an IQ of 100 half the
world was smarter than nu half the world
is less smart what they found is that
there is a correlation but it stopped an
IQ of 104 if you didn’t buy Q 104 or
higher you have this same creative
potential as everybody else and IQ of
104 it’s everybody in this room right
this is well over 40% of the world
this is billions and billions of people
with the same creative potential it’s
not just a handful of creative geniuses
that we can all name and think of so
this is called the threshold theory it’s
the idea that above a certain relatively
average IQ we all have the same creative
potential yes
so we all have this potential well then
the obvious question is how do we unlock
it how do we actually get this potential
to the surface and so to tell you this
story I’m going to go to lovely Phoenix
Arizona
the Phoenix suburbs actually you might
haier there one day and I’m gonna tell
you about a little video rental store
now if you’re like me you probably don’t
remember video rental stores like a hazy
memory but here’s what they look like
and those are VHS tapes and they sell
Raisinets
you might be familiar with those I know
this is like Netflix but like in a store
and at this video rental store in the
suburbs of Phoenix was an 18-year old
community college student named Ted he
was the clerk and this is not Ted Ted
didn’t have a beard and you know it was
weird about this is that every day
around six o’clock something would
happen a line would form of people
waiting to talk to this 18-year old
clerk they would wrap around the comedy
section the horror section all the way
past the weird international films all
wanted to talk to Ted because for some
reason Ted had this amazing ability to
tell you what movies you would like if
you said I’d like Woody Allen’s that how
about Albert Brooks do you like this
action movie how about that action movie
he was like a film Somali eh he knew all
the different movies and the reason why
is kind of interesting so Ted grew up in
a sort of chaotic household his parents
had him when they were teenagers he had
four siblings they were poor and so to
escape he would go over to his
grandmother’s house and this is what you
get when you buy stock photos for
grandmother’s living room this looks
kind of 1960s but it was the 1980s so
play along and his grandmother loved
entertainment she loved Hollywood she
would constantly playing TV she had all
the Hollywood gossip magazines thrown
across the living room she would talk
about the actors and actresses with
their first names that there are former
lovers and friends and Ted found that
this was an escape this was somewhere
where he could get away he could really
be safe and so one day when this
physical Netflix opened down the street
he walked in and he started looking and
playing you know moving around the
movies and the owner was like wow this
kids really into this why don’t you work
here he’s like yeah that’d be great
but here’s the thing video rental stores
and I have to explain this I’ll be slow
they’re empty during the day because
people are at work they don’t really
rent movies right
you know watching Netflix at work okay
and so Ted was like well I could do my
homework or I could watch every single
video in the store and I’m not being
hyperbolic you know it was the 90s or
was as many videos but he literally
watched every single video in this store
and what happened was that Ted had
consumed a huge amount of content he
understood what movies were out there
what people people have seen what was
similar what was different and from this
he developed taste this taste went on to
serve him incredibly well he’s now the
chief content officer of Netflix which
this year is producing 700 pieces of
original programming over the last 18
years is complete upended Hollywood
since he started he’s in charge of all
content licensing content acquisition
all of this and he describes that time
at that video rental store as a film
school and MBA all wrapped up into one
it gave him the underlying ingredients
first creativity but why this is
actually a pattern that you see over and
over again where you look at the stories
of creative genius they constantly are
consuming JK Rowling was asked in an
interview how do you become a great
writer and what she said that the most
important thing is to read as much as
you can like I did it will give you an
understanding of what makes good writing
and to enlarge your vocabulary so why
does this work
when I interviewed these creative juices
for a book over and over again they told
me that it’s some period of intense
consumption you know if they were maybe
a novelist they went to the library and
read lots and lots of books they were
musician they would sit in their room
just listen to all these songs but why
was this tied to creativity and so to
talk about this we’re gonna fast-forward
to me in 20 years
I aged really well
and for some reason reading a paper
newspaper it’s weird it’s nostalgic and
I’m paging through this oddly paper
newspaper and I come across a crossword
puzzle and what’s interesting about
crossword puzzles for the signs of
creativity is how we solve them
see there’s two different ways you can
solve a crossword puzzle the first is
what we call logical processing this is
when you’re looking at the crossword
puzzle and you’re like okay there’s like
an R here and r there maybe an E oh it’s
green I got it I got it right
that’s a very slow deliberate conscious
way to process and this happens in the
left hemisphere of our brain see it’s
very kind of cliche to talk about right
hemisphere left hemisphere but it’s
actually really important to the science
of how creativity works scene the left
hemisphere of our brain we store the
dominant meanings of words so for
example if I said mmm what is the color
of the sky
you’d say blue or gray and when you’re
solving a math problem the left
hemisphere your brain is working through
it and very consciously solving this
step by step by step it’s a very aware
process now there’s another way you can
solve a crossword puzzle you’ve all had
this experience sometimes you’re looking
at it and you’re looking at it like oh
it’s green you have sudden insight and
what’s interesting about this for
scientists who study creativity is that
these types of sudden insights these are
the same things from a biological
perspective as those flashes of genius
so they give us a way to actually study
how our brain works when creativity is
happening and here’s what we found
so these flashes of genius one of the
people who studies them Allah is this
guy named dr. Edward Bowden he’s a
professor works a lot with the creative
brain lab at Northwestern University I
never you don’t a lot for my book and
one of the things he said I think is a
really good sort of punch line to this
is that aha moments are a normal
cognitive process but they have a
surprising result see what happens is
that our right brain is in charge of
having more nuance more metaphorical
associations so for example if you’re
watching a stand-up comedian and
assuming there
they say a joke your right brain
instantly connects the pawn it gets why
it’s funny it’s not thinking through the
joke very logically and trying to
understand it you know another way you
can think about this is think about a
word like worm if I said visualize a
worm you might visualize something like
this without the weird face but your
right hemisphere would do something
different your right hemisphere would be
like mmm what about gummy worms or those
songs that you can’t stop thinking about
you know ear worms so our right
hemisphere has this amazing ability to
connect distant concepts but the thing
is is that it’s actually not special it
simply subconscious our right hemisphere
is doing this processing all the time
trying to connect new and different and
disparate ideas but it does this all
below the level of consciousness and
only comes out and says hey when he
actually has the idea and it feels
someone magical but it’s simply biology
and the thing is that you can actually
learn how to make these happen and the
reason how you do this is it’s all about
consumption so dr. Edward Bowden told me
this in our interview and I put it in
the book twice the second time in bold
it was really obnoxious because I think
it’s really important this quote he said
you can’t have insights about things you
don’t know anything about Paul McCartney
grew up in a household where his parents
were musicians he was listening to music
there as entire childhood he played in a
cover band for years so yeah of course
he dreams about music and you don’t JK
rowling also had a troubled childhood
she would lock herself in her bedroom
and just read books to escape see of
course she dreams about characters and
you don’t but it doesn’t mean you can so
for the book I interviewed all these
different creatives as ranging from
billionaires like David Rubenstein
youtubers like KC nice tat Nina Jacobson
who is the president Walt Disney motion
pictures and over and over again I found
that they spend a huge amount of time
not creating content but consuming
content because consuming
ten so it gives you the ingredients to
actually connect and have the ideas to
bring together and one of the most
interesting things was not just they had
some period their childhood where they
spent all day locked up reading or
watching or doing but actually continues
to this day
so even people like Ted sir and OHS even
though they’re running you know big
organizations even though they have all
the success
Ted sir and OHS told me that he still
watches three to four hours of
television every single day because
consuming content is how you form
creativity and so I call this in the
book I call it the 20% principle it’s
the idea that even to this day these
people these people we aspire to be
they spend 20% of their waking hours
simply consuming content in their niche
to give them the raw materials to be
creative and so the thing I want to
leave you with today is that consumption
the thing we may all feel a little bit
guilty about is actually with leads to being able to create thank you very much
is engineering creativity and you know I
went through the word engineering here
because we’re at Georgia Tech so I
thought you know you’d pay attention
more so it’s good but I have a book
coming out they’ve been working on for
three years all about how anyone can
have moments of creative genius for the
book I interviewed about 25 living
creative geniuses and tons of academics
who studied creativity and the thing I
found is when you actually look at
creativity we think of it as something
very different than it actually is so
let me tell you what I mean now
creativity for many of us is one of
those things that you know it when you
see it it’s you know you look at that
painting or like oh that’s creative
versus when you look at one of my
paintings you go hmm not so much but
there’s some people who are just so good
at this there’s some people the creative
geniuses we think of Pablo Picasso
Mozart Beyonce that are really really
good at this you know we think about
over here we have Oprah Elon Musk so you
know Steve Jobs they’re able to create
product after product book after book
song after song that’s incredibly
successful right there are the true
creative geniuses of our world of course
you also have to remember Taylor Swift
so what’s interesting about creativity
is that it’s very intertwined with
creative genius it’s hard to talk about
creativity without talking about the
people who actually execute on it one of
the most famous creative geniuses is
Paul McCartney he has the number one
most number one singles of any
songwriter ever more than John Lennon
and he wrote the song yesterday
yesterday is the most recorded song in
history but what’s interesting about the
song yesterday is how he came up with
the idea see Paul McCartney one day just
woke up with it he literally talked
about this in interviews he says I woke
up one morning with a tune in my head
and thought hey I don’t know this tune
or do I this creative genius literally
woke up with the most recorded song in
history he was actually so worried about
this that he’d accidentally maybe
plagiarized
that he went around for weeks it would
actually hum it to people and say hey
have you heard this before I was like
I’m suspicious and this is also true you
could google it but he didn’t have
lyrics so he used this placeholder
lyrics this is true I’m gonna sing it
for you
scrambled eggs oh my baby how I love
your rings did it’ll I believe in
scrambled eggs the crowd goes wild this
is true so we have these stories of
creative geniuses creating these amazing
things and just seemed so easy right
they have these flashes these moments
that we normies don’t have so this is
what I call in the book the inspiration
theory of creativity and it’s the main
way that in Western culture we think of
creativity there’s four main elements
the first that’s individual centric
right it’s Steve Jobs
it’s Elon Musk it’s Beyonce second it’s
easy right Paul McCartney literally
wakes up with this he’s not struggling
right we all know the story about JK
Rowling was on a train and she did for
Harry Potter and she wrote it on a
napkin
Thurs it’s overwhelming right it
literally kind of ripples through them
inspirations like this sort of physical
force and forth and finally they’re kind
of weird they’re a little bit manic
they’re maybe a little neurotic they’re
maybe a little bit odd and what’s
interesting about this is that’s also
unattainable right this notion of
creativity means if we weren’t born with
it if we weren’t born with the ability
to just wake up with songs then how are
we gonna actually learn to be more
creative a study done by Adobe found
that only 25% of us think that we’re
living up to our creative potential it’s
pretty depressing I know he’s really
cute
so the question I had and one of the
questions attacks on the book is is this
actually true do you actually have to be
born with this sort of amazing mystical
genius to actually be creative so what
if this wasn’t true there’s a lot of
studies that dig into this and what’s
amazing I’m gonna talk a little bit this
is the research shows this is actually
wildly different than the truth the
truth is actually a creativity is a
skill it’s a muscle it’s something you
get better at let me show you one of the
studies so for this study we’re gonna go
to Austria and in Austria there are some
researchers at a university and they had
a pretty basic question do you have to
be an IQ genius to be a creative genius
and so how they did this was it took a
bunch of students and they hasn’t do an
IQ test then they also had them do
what’s called a divergent thinking test
it’s one that academically valid ways to
measure creative potential the whole
idea was okay if you have to be a genius
to be creative there’d be a correlation
the higher the IQ the more creative you
would be but here’s where they found
there was a correlation but only up
until a point C IQ is on a standard bell
curve you have an IQ of 100 half the
world was smarter than nu half the world
is less smart what they found is that
there is a correlation but it stopped an
IQ of 104 if you didn’t buy Q 104 or
higher you have this same creative
potential as everybody else and IQ of
104 it’s everybody in this room right
this is well over 40% of the world
this is billions and billions of people
with the same creative potential it’s
not just a handful of creative geniuses
that we can all name and think of so
this is called the threshold theory it’s
the idea that above a certain relatively
average IQ we all have the same creative
potential yes
so we all have this potential well then
the obvious question is how do we unlock
it how do we actually get this potential
to the surface and so to tell you this
story I’m going to go to lovely Phoenix
Arizona
the Phoenix suburbs actually you might
haier there one day and I’m gonna tell
you about a little video rental store
now if you’re like me you probably don’t
remember video rental stores like a hazy
memory but here’s what they look like
and those are VHS tapes and they sell
Raisinets
you might be familiar with those I know
this is like Netflix but like in a store
and at this video rental store in the
suburbs of Phoenix was an 18-year old
community college student named Ted he
was the clerk and this is not Ted Ted
didn’t have a beard and you know it was
weird about this is that every day
around six o’clock something would
happen a line would form of people
waiting to talk to this 18-year old
clerk they would wrap around the comedy
section the horror section all the way
past the weird international films all
wanted to talk to Ted because for some
reason Ted had this amazing ability to
tell you what movies you would like if
you said I’d like Woody Allen’s that how
about Albert Brooks do you like this
action movie how about that action movie
he was like a film Somali eh he knew all
the different movies and the reason why
is kind of interesting so Ted grew up in
a sort of chaotic household his parents
had him when they were teenagers he had
four siblings they were poor and so to
escape he would go over to his
grandmother’s house and this is what you
get when you buy stock photos for
grandmother’s living room this looks
kind of 1960s but it was the 1980s so
play along and his grandmother loved
entertainment she loved Hollywood she
would constantly playing TV she had all
the Hollywood gossip magazines thrown
across the living room she would talk
about the actors and actresses with
their first names that there are former
lovers and friends and Ted found that
this was an escape this was somewhere
where he could get away he could really
be safe and so one day when this
physical Netflix opened down the street
he walked in and he started looking and
playing you know moving around the
movies and the owner was like wow this
kids really into this why don’t you work
here he’s like yeah that’d be great
but here’s the thing video rental stores
and I have to explain this I’ll be slow
they’re empty during the day because
people are at work they don’t really
rent movies right
you know watching Netflix at work okay
and so Ted was like well I could do my
homework or I could watch every single
video in the store and I’m not being
hyperbolic you know it was the 90s or
was as many videos but he literally
watched every single video in this store
and what happened was that Ted had
consumed a huge amount of content he
understood what movies were out there
what people people have seen what was
similar what was different and from this
he developed taste this taste went on to
serve him incredibly well he’s now the
chief content officer of Netflix which
this year is producing 700 pieces of
original programming over the last 18
years is complete upended Hollywood
since he started he’s in charge of all
content licensing content acquisition
all of this and he describes that time
at that video rental store as a film
school and MBA all wrapped up into one
it gave him the underlying ingredients
first creativity but why this is
actually a pattern that you see over and
over again where you look at the stories
of creative genius they constantly are
consuming JK Rowling was asked in an
interview how do you become a great
writer and what she said that the most
important thing is to read as much as
you can like I did it will give you an
understanding of what makes good writing
and to enlarge your vocabulary so why
does this work
when I interviewed these creative juices
for a book over and over again they told
me that it’s some period of intense
consumption you know if they were maybe
a novelist they went to the library and
read lots and lots of books they were
musician they would sit in their room
just listen to all these songs but why
was this tied to creativity and so to
talk about this we’re gonna fast-forward
to me in 20 years
I aged really well
and for some reason reading a paper
newspaper it’s weird it’s nostalgic and
I’m paging through this oddly paper
newspaper and I come across a crossword
puzzle and what’s interesting about
crossword puzzles for the signs of
creativity is how we solve them
see there’s two different ways you can
solve a crossword puzzle the first is
what we call logical processing this is
when you’re looking at the crossword
puzzle and you’re like okay there’s like
an R here and r there maybe an E oh it’s
green I got it I got it right
that’s a very slow deliberate conscious
way to process and this happens in the
left hemisphere of our brain see it’s
very kind of cliche to talk about right
hemisphere left hemisphere but it’s
actually really important to the science
of how creativity works scene the left
hemisphere of our brain we store the
dominant meanings of words so for
example if I said mmm what is the color
of the sky
you’d say blue or gray and when you’re
solving a math problem the left
hemisphere your brain is working through
it and very consciously solving this
step by step by step it’s a very aware
process now there’s another way you can
solve a crossword puzzle you’ve all had
this experience sometimes you’re looking
at it and you’re looking at it like oh
it’s green you have sudden insight and
what’s interesting about this for
scientists who study creativity is that
these types of sudden insights these are
the same things from a biological
perspective as those flashes of genius
so they give us a way to actually study
how our brain works when creativity is
happening and here’s what we found
so these flashes of genius one of the
people who studies them Allah is this
guy named dr. Edward Bowden he’s a
professor works a lot with the creative
brain lab at Northwestern University I
never you don’t a lot for my book and
one of the things he said I think is a
really good sort of punch line to this
is that aha moments are a normal
cognitive process but they have a
surprising result see what happens is
that our right brain is in charge of
having more nuance more metaphorical
associations so for example if you’re
watching a stand-up comedian and
assuming there
they say a joke your right brain
instantly connects the pawn it gets why
it’s funny it’s not thinking through the
joke very logically and trying to
understand it you know another way you
can think about this is think about a
word like worm if I said visualize a
worm you might visualize something like
this without the weird face but your
right hemisphere would do something
different your right hemisphere would be
like mmm what about gummy worms or those
songs that you can’t stop thinking about
you know ear worms so our right
hemisphere has this amazing ability to
connect distant concepts but the thing
is is that it’s actually not special it
simply subconscious our right hemisphere
is doing this processing all the time
trying to connect new and different and
disparate ideas but it does this all
below the level of consciousness and
only comes out and says hey when he
actually has the idea and it feels
someone magical but it’s simply biology
and the thing is that you can actually
learn how to make these happen and the
reason how you do this is it’s all about
consumption so dr. Edward Bowden told me
this in our interview and I put it in
the book twice the second time in bold
it was really obnoxious because I think
it’s really important this quote he said
you can’t have insights about things you
don’t know anything about Paul McCartney
grew up in a household where his parents
were musicians he was listening to music
there as entire childhood he played in a
cover band for years so yeah of course
he dreams about music and you don’t JK
rowling also had a troubled childhood
she would lock herself in her bedroom
and just read books to escape see of
course she dreams about characters and
you don’t but it doesn’t mean you can so
for the book I interviewed all these
different creatives as ranging from
billionaires like David Rubenstein
youtubers like KC nice tat Nina Jacobson
who is the president Walt Disney motion
pictures and over and over again I found
that they spend a huge amount of time
not creating content but consuming
content because consuming
ten so it gives you the ingredients to
actually connect and have the ideas to
bring together and one of the most
interesting things was not just they had
some period their childhood where they
spent all day locked up reading or
watching or doing but actually continues
to this day
so even people like Ted sir and OHS even
though they’re running you know big
organizations even though they have all
the success
Ted sir and OHS told me that he still
watches three to four hours of
television every single day because
consuming content is how you form
creativity and so I call this in the
book I call it the 20% principle it’s
the idea that even to this day these
people these people we aspire to be
they spend 20% of their waking hours
simply consuming content in their niche
to give them the raw materials to be
creative and so the thing I want to
leave you with today is that consumption
the thing we may all feel a little bit
guilty about is actually with leads to being able to create thank you very much
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