In their book The Innovator’s DNA, Jeffrey Dyer, Hal Gregersen and Clayton Christensen highlight the role that making “surprising connections” – so-called associational thinking – plays in business success. Taking a calligraphy class after quitting college provided Apple co-founder Steve Jobs with the idea for the typography that gave the Mac a reputation for style. Scott Cook, Intuit’s founder, invented Quicken after spotting that home computers created a market for software that households, such as his own, could use to manage their finances. Some individuals – the Jobs of this world − are prodigious creators, but with practice anyone can improve, the authors say.
In Your Creative Brain, Shelley Carson, a Harvard psychologist, explains why some people are bold connectors of ideas and others are not. To avoid risking failure or ridicule, many people subconsciously reject information that contradicts received wisdom without exploring its possibilities. Deadlines make things worse. When faced with a challenge, says Martine Haas, a management professor at the Wharton school at the University of Pennsylvania, people focus on what is obviously relevant. This makes tasks more manageable, but confines thinking to predicable paths.
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