Understanding Creativity

A lightning course for executives

About the Author

Jack Smith was born in Wallasey, Cheshire in 1927. He was educated in England and in America; served in the U.S. Navy 1944–46; then led a rolling-stone existence for about ten years, as a merchant seaman, BBC sound mixer, drama student, stage manager, repertory actor, trumpet player, commis chef, bartender and advertisement salesman.

This all changed when he married his ideal woman. He became an advertising writer, added a long string of letters to his name, lectured and examined in advertising and marketing, and eventually became creative director with a world-wide agency.

While living, visiting or working in thirty different countries, he has published two novels and a third was due soon. At the time of publication he was a senior executive with the Independent Broadcasting Authority, living with his wife and two children in Taplow, Bucks.

About the Book

Despite its title, this slim book is not really about creativity. As Smith explains in the opening pages, he much prefers the word innovation—and that is what he sets out to demystify. Written for a business audience in the early 1970s, it is a brisk, wry, and still surprisingly relevant tour through the psychology of new ideas: where they come from, why they are so fiercely resisted, and what an individual can practically do to coax them out.

At around 36 pages, illustrated throughout by Magnus Lohkamp, the book wears its learning lightly. Smith cites Koestler, de Bono, Jung and a gallery of great innovators from Newton to Mendeleev, but always in the service of a single practical argument: that the subconscious mind is the seat of innovation, that logic actively inhibits new ideas, and that the executive who wishes to think originally must learn to get out of his own way.

I approached Jack Nickle Smith in around 2004 to ask for his permission to reproduce this book online. He willingly agreed and seemed somewhat surprised that someone would want to reproduce a book from 30 years earlier (and now 50 years ago). But there still remains many useful insights that are drawn from the author's own experiences.

Contents

1. Let’s Abolish ‘Creativity’
2. There’s Nowhere to Begin — So Let’s Start
3. Two Brains? — Crazy!
4. Logic is for the Birds
5. Would You Prefer People to Think of You as Eccentric or Orthodox?
6. You Have Been Found Guilty of Obstruction
7. Getting a New Idea is Actually Impossible
8. Great Discoveries Are Never Accidental
9. Recapitulation
10. C ∗ L ∗ I ∗ C
11. Solitary Cogitation
12. Tail-Piece