Press: Everyday creativity - In Character

Incharacter.org - Everyday Creativity by Howard Gardner: "What do we know about the lives of individuals who have attained the Big C? Here are some generalizations that have emerged from my fifteen years of study: creators in most areas come from conventional backgrounds – they learn to work hard during their early years and are rewarded for doing so by their parents. Typically, they are not prodigies; they become iconoclastic personalities before they choose an area in which to concentrate their talents. They don’t choose their domain randomly, but rather select from a small number for which they are suited. By the end of adolescence, they leave the small community where they have been raised and move to a metropolis where they search out others like themselves.

They spend up to a decade mastering their discipline. Though some domains prove more demanding to master than others, there are no shortcuts to Creativity. The crucial difference between experts and Creators emerges when anomalies or inconsistencies crop up. Experts tend to ignore these or assimilate them into standard practice. They are problem solvers. Creators, by contrast, become intrigued by these exceptions and make them central in their practice. They are problem finders. This fascination necessarily distances them from others, but they persist and eventually – though not inevitably – some kind of a breakthrough takes place."