CHAPTER 20
Your Best Ideas Are Often Your Last Ideas
by Loran Nordgren and Brian Lucas
To live up to our creative potential, we must first understand how the creative process actually works. Prior research has shown that people’s first ideas are rarely their most creative. Coming up with just one breakthrough idea typically requires a lengthy brainstorming process in which you generate a large pool of potential options and iterate on them before finally reaching your most creative idea.
Despite this reality, however, most people consistently underestimate the value of persistence in the creative process. In our research, we document a fallacy we call the creative cliff illusion: Although creativity in fact tends to either increase or stay the ...
Get HBR Guide to Unlocking Creativity now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
