Research

Become a Creative Genius {Again} refers to academic research projects on occasion, and you will find more about them here.

Over the years my students at Duke presented me with hundreds of studies from neuroscientists and social scientists on how one gets into a productive creative state and then maintains it. I’ve collected and generalized wisdoms from those studies and they are just one element of The Generative Way, even when I don’t mention it.  

The mother of all creativity research is the work of George Land and Beth Jarman, beginning with their work for NASA. This is so important to your creative confidence, that you fully appreciate that you were born a creative genius and so was virtually everyone around you, that I unpacked their research pretty well in the book.  And if you want more, here’s a couple of links and when you Google ‘George Land Creativity’, the third link, you’ll find such a strong and deep on-line appreciation for this research you may be left wondering why it’s taken us so long to begin the reclamation projects, individually and collectively. .

I think it validates the reality of our natural born creative genius that over 70% of employment in large portions of the world considered to be underdeveloped is self-generated work, folks using their natural born creative capacities and entrepreneurial instincts to create jobs for themselves by identifying opportunity in their communities, developing those opportunities, and earning a living for themselves and their families.  The point of view around much of the research that reveals this sets out to demonstrate the underdeveloped state of those economies, that there are no jobs for the populace, so they have to create their own. The point is, they can, without taking classes in entrepreneurship, without capital, with natural creatively entrepreneurial qualities as their only asset.

The Stanford research on the impact walking has on your creativity has practical value immediately available to you. Stop what you are doing and take a hike. Take your meeting for a stroll. Arrive ten minutes early for a meeting and walk leisurely to your destination. I find folks who work from home have figured out when they have a long business call they walk the back yard while talking, and listening.  

A very interesting research project has influenced the cover design of ‘Becoming a Creative Genius (again)’. Researchers from the University of Munich and the University of Rochester determined that staring at the color green for 30 seconds will have a material impact on your subsequent creative performance. I have been passing out green folders to folks ever since I learned of this research, and we have a Creative Green Card on the site for you to download, and I asked the book designer to keep the impact green has in mind when he designed the cover, thanks Kevin.