Reflection 3 — Explaining Creativity: The science of human innovation by Sawyer, R
The book I chose to read is Explaining Creativity: The science of human innovation. It is a book written by R. Keith Sawyer and Danah Henriksen. The style of this book is a scholarly accessible style. In the book, Sawyer used interdisciplinary approach with a variety of areas including psychology, sociology, education, business, and anthropology. With a lot of engaging examples, the book makes clear and systematic statement and explanations on the topic of human beings’ creativity.
The main topics and themes about creativity are definition and nature of creativity, cognitive processes, the creative personality, social influences, stages of the creative process, education and creativity, organizational creativity, and methods for studying creativity.
I chose this book because I think creativity is a fantastic function human beings have that makes human civilization become the most beautiful culture in the solar system. I want to know more about how creativity works in the process of creating. What is the logic in it? What is the difference between creative work and reduplicate work. I want to be a creative person.
The overall impression when I was reading the book is Sawyer had analyzed and modelized the concept of creativity with many different aspects that the understanding is outstanding and comprehensive. There are many examples in the book which helped me to understand the statements Sawyer gave me in the book better. Though I still cannot digest a large part of the concept mentioned in the book, I feel I have better understanding about what the shape, color, and smell of creativity among human beings is.
The first insight I would like to share about this book is creative work is much more important than reduplicate work. I think the concept is like “Genius is 99 percent of effort and 1 percent of talent”. Reduplicate work is like the “99 percent of effort” and creativity is like the “1 percent of talent”. Though both of them are necessary, creativity contain more value, in my point of view. The current business model also strengths this idea that the first person who create a new innovation should be the person enjoys the following profits. Creativity is the thing that keeps pushing human beings moving further and further.
The other insight I want to share is creativity in the area of art is becoming more and more important for human civilization. The book mentioned that after the second world war, lots of art in many different types of performance came out in the whole world. As human is fulfilling the needs of warm, food, and safe, the upper level of needs is getting more and more obvious among people. I believe when the productivity is fully expanded that people are no need to work but robot replace the main workforce of human beings, creativity will be the first priority people are purchasing in their lives.
