Unearthing Creative Thought

“How Great Ideas Happen

 

By George Newman

 

Simon & Schuster, 304 pages, $30

 

I approach every book-review assignment with a professional eagerness. Yet when it comes time to put words on the page, enthusiasm gives way to doubt. No matter how often I've done this before, I worry that this time I'll come up short. I clear my schedule and hole up in the library, only to fritter away hours doing everything but writing. Eventually, after more than a few false starts and abandoned lines, another essay takes shape, as if by magic.

 

But does magic have anything to do with it? George Newman, a cognitive scientist and professor at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, would say no.

 

In "How Great Ideas Happen," he draws on scientific studies, historical examples and behavioral research to argue that what we call inspiration is better understood as a set of habits and mental practices available to anyone willing to cultivate them.

 

Creativity, in his telling, is more method than miracle.

 

The first myth Mr. Newman challenges is the romantic notion that isolation breeds originality. Retreating to a personal Walden, he suggests, may smother creativity rather than fuel it. Isolating ourselves from colleagues, acquaintances and the wider world severs what sociologists call our weak ties, the people outside of our circle of close family and friends who tend to be the conduits of fresh ideas. As important, Mr. Newman argues, is what happens once those ideas surface: submitting them to the scrutiny of others, whose feedback often sharpens what solitary effort cannot.

 

Mr. Newman also dispels the belief that great ideas are entirely new. In practice, he argues, many innovations grow out of existing ones, often by borrowing or transplanting concepts from one field to another. A landmark study by Brian Uzzi, a systems researcher who analyzed 18 million scientific papers, found that the greatest breakthroughs contained only 5% to 10% novel material. What looks like brilliance, in other words, often turns out to be a strategic mix of the old with a touch of the new.

 

Mr. Newman likens his model of creativity to an archaeological expedition.

 

 First comes deciding where to look, a stage he calls surveying.

 

Next comes gridding the search, imposing structure and defining the project's parameters.

 

Only then does the familiar work of idea generation begin, as one digs through the landscape for possibilities.

 

The final step, sifting, is the least glamorous but perhaps the most consequential: refining what has been unearthed.

 

If the digging phase is where ideas are found, it is also where many people go astray. Mr. Newman cites a series of studies showing that people dramatically underestimate how productive continued searching will be. In experiments involving brainstorming, participants predicted that their best ideas would come early and that additional effort would yield diminishing returns. In fact, the opposite was true: The point at which people thought they'd be depleted was often when their best ideas began to emerge. The so-called creative-cliff illusion leads us to abandon the search before it heats up.

 

For all its appeal as a roadmap, Mr. Newman's method may work better for some disciplines than others. Scientific problem-solving, product design and strategic thinking lend themselves naturally to his systematic approach. But it's less clear whether a poet searching for a metaphor or a composer developing a motif works by gridding constraints and digging methodically. Mr. Newman's framework is most persuasive when applied to creativity that solves identifiable problems rather than the kind that courts mystery or ambiguity.

 

His book arrives at a moment when creativity often feels less like a pleasure than a business imperative, the last refuge of human value in an economy increasingly built on automation and artificial intelligence. Employers and educators claim that creativity will keep us relevant and in demand, even as AI absorbs many white-collar jobs. Against this tense backdrop, Mr. Newman is offering a way of finding better ideas and a measure of reassurance that no one must be a genius to discover them.

 

That assurance extends, perhaps uneasily, to generative AI. Mr. Newman makes a case for its value in the digging stage, arguing that sheer volume matters more than initial quality. Producing hundreds of ideas, after all, boosts the odds of finding a few good ones. But Mr. Newman insists that humans are still essential to the process: They bring the judgment to recognize a fertile idea, the unique experiences to make it their own and the ability to execute it in ways machines cannot replicate. The question is whether this division of labor -- machines for volume, humans for discernment -- is a fruitful partnership or a more troubling redefinition of what creative work looks like.

 

Even after Mr. Newman has done his best to demystify the creative life, he may not convince everyone to reject their rituals and superstitions. Perhaps that's as it should be. His advice is genuinely useful and his research illuminating for anyone trying to be a more creative thinker. But there remains something sustaining about the belief that creativity involves an element of the inexplicable, and that even when we follow a structured process, our best ideas arrive by some kind of magic.” [1]

 

1. REVIEW --- Books: Unearthing Creative Thought. Lanks, Belinda.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 31 Jan 2026: C9.