Cruel paradoxes of our time, says one of the reviewers, where standards of living get higher while the quality of life declines. One of those paradoxes is how the world needs more creative-thinking, flexible people in a world continuously evolving at a faster and faster pace, but they are not so easy to find. The sheer unpredictability of human affairs, in this context of uncertainty and change, lies right at the author’s argument for cultivating our powers of creativity in business, education and in everyday life. The author aims at answering why is essential to promote creativity and innovation, what is the problem with adults who believe or assume they are not creative, and what is involved in developing creativity. Is everyone creative or just a select few? The author does believe that everyone has huge creative capacities as “a natural result of being a human being”, and the challenge is to develop them without privileging any selected few in particular. Creativity can be learned, but in order to achieve that organizations and above all educational systems need to be run in a radically new different ways, in keeping with the times.
Out of our minds : learning to be creative. Ken Robinson. Boston, Mass.: Capstone Publishing Ltd (a Wiley Company), 2011, 2nd Edition.