Think everybody has a positive view of creativity? Think again!

Of course, we believe that creativity is a universally great thing — thinking otherwise is like dismissing hope or truth! In his conversational, approachable book, New York Times Pulitzer Prize winning author Matt Richtel takes us on a guided tour of the many facets of creativity and offers the encouragement that creativity is innate to being human — it is in all of us.

Matt Richtel has woven together a mind-blowing series of stories, interviews and examples of the creative process at work across the ages and human endeavor. He’s going to be joining me by the fireside this Friday and we’ll be talking about many of them. Register here. In the meantime, some nuggets I found particularly interesting.

Creativity — inventing something new, original and valuable– can be terrifying!

Despite our cultural pro-creativity bias, Richtel’s work with researchers who study our actual feelings about creative solutions finds that for many, creative new solutions are scary and can carry negative connotations. This makes sense when viewed through the lens of stability versus change. After all, a truly meaningful creative new solution makes older ones obsolete. This reminded me of the effects of strategic inflection points that I write about —…