I am in the process of re-reading one of the most inspiring and therefore important (especially for the YGPs) books that I have ever read. The book is Imagine by Jonah Lehrer. The main theme is creativity and how it can be applied to solving problems, in some cases very difficult problems that have gone unsolved by some of the smartest scientists in the world, but more on that in a minute.
Imagine focuses a lot on the brain and in particular on the fact that the brain has two hemispheres – the left and the right. The left is responsible for analytic problem solving and the right handles creativity.
Here’s just one example of the inspiration that Lehrer provides. When you are trying to solve a problem and find yourself stumped, that is exactly what you want to happen. Why, because until your left brain gets stumped the right brain will not assume control and start supplying the creative solutions needed to solve the problem. Who knew getting stumped was a good thing?
In perhaps the most impressive example of this phenomena Alpheus Bingham, a vice president at Eli Lilly, one of the largest drug companies in the world made a high risk decision in the late 1990’s concerning a number of difficult problems that had gone unsolved for years. One day Bingham announced he was going public via a website with the problems and to make it attractive for people he was offering to pay a substantial fee for the solution to the problems that have gone unsolved by his scientists for years.
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