Hardly revolutionary, but sensible advice on how to nurture creativity.
Examining the lives of serial innovators reveals strong commonalities.
Applying the research methods of large sample studies to investigate genius, Schilling (Management and Organizations/New York Univ. Stern School of Business; Strategic Management of Technological Innovation, 2004, etc.) failed to answer her overarching question: “is there some combination of traits or resources that increases the likelihood of an individual becoming a serial breakthrough innovator?” Instead, she took “a multiple case study approach” of a small sample of innovators, aiming to identify any unusual characteristics that set these individuals apart. Focusing on science and technology, she chose men—and one woman, Marie Curie—from different time periods and about whom significant biographical details were available: Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Steve Jobs, Dean Kamen, Elon Musk, and Nikola Tesla. Except for Kamen, the inventor of Segway as well as the first portable kidney dialysis machine, among other medical breakthroughs, all the innovators are likely to be familiar to readers, and Schilling offers no groundbreaking information about their lives or work. Her interest is in illuminating factors that enabled them to generate original ideas. She distinguishes between personal characteristics (such as a sense of separateness or rebellion against authority) and mechanisms (any situational advantage that allowed them to flourish). A feeling of being different or disconnected from the crowd, she found, “typically emerges quite early in life.” Einstein, Curie, and Jobs perceived themselves as different from peers and family; although this separateness may result in “a sense of suffering,” it also helps individuals “generate and pursue big and unusual ideas.” Although they thrive in solitude, innovators benefit from “a dense personal network” through which they can disseminate their ideas. Schilling uses her findings to offer suggestions to business leaders and parents about fostering innovation. She cites flexible teams at Pixar, for example, which give team members autonomy and support. She urges parents to consider that children who struggle in a structured classroom may benefit from a more fluid curriculum as well as access to intellectual and technological resources.
Hardly revolutionary, but sensible advice on how to nurture creativity.Pub Date: Feb. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-61039-792-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2017
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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