Creativity Essay

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A Creativity Researcher For More Than 30 Years, ihaly Csikszentmihalyi Is A Professor Of Human Development And Education In The Department Of Psychology At The University Of Chicago. He Has Written 13 Books, Including The Best-Seller Flow: The Psychology Of Optimal Experience (Harper Collins, 1991). Here Are Highlights Of His Books “Creativity”. This Book Is About What Makes Life Worth Living. The Creative Excitement Of The Artist At Her Easel Or The Scientist In The Lab Comes As Close To The Ideal Fulfillment As We All Hope To, And So Rarely Do. Professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Interviewed More Then Ninety Of Possibly The Most Interesting People In The World - People Like Actor Ed Asner, Authors Robertson Davies And Nadine Gordimer, Scientist Jonas Salk And Linus Pauling, Senator Eugene Mccarthy - Who Have Changed The Way People In Their Fields Think And Work To Find Out How Creativity Has Been A Force In Their Lives. The Author Defines Creativity In A Mode He Designates As “Capital C”, Distinct From Individual Creative Impulses Or Acts That Occur Without Initiating Significant Cultural Change. The Creativity With A Capital C That Is Of Interest To Csikszentmihalyi Is The Act Of Creativity By Which Culture And Cultural Evolution Are Seminally Altered. What Made Galileo And Einstein Think Otherwise And But Couldn’t It Be This? What If They Hadn’t? They Aren’t Around To Ask. But There Are Others Who Are. Creativity Provides A Groundbreaking Overview Of Those Characteristics Shared By Some Of The Most Extraordinary Visionaries Of Our Most Recent Century, Painstakingly Gleaned From Hundreds Of Hours Of Personal Interviews. Finally, It Proposes Ways In Which We Can Capitalize On These Commonalities In Order To Further Creativity In O...

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...szentmihalyi Builds On His Flow Theory, Profiling Individuals Who Have Found Ways To Make Flow A Permanent Feature Of Their Lives And At The Same Time Have Contributed To Society And Culture. Professor Csikszentmihalyi Explores Why Creative People Are Often Seen As Selfish And Arrogant (Even Though They Are Not) And Reveals That The Idea Of The Tortured Genius Is Largely A Myth. He Argues That Creativity Needs To Be Cultivated Not Only In Traditionally Creative Fields Like Sciences And Art, But Also In Business, Government, And Education. Conversations With Dozens Of Respondents To Csikszentmihalyi’s Survey Are Combined In This Book With A Careful Analysis Of What Makes Creativity Possible And Even Likely. Those Of Us In The Growing Field Of Knowledge Management Have Much To Take From It Personally And Professionally And Much, Much Pleasure To Find In It As Well.

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