The Riddle: Where Ideas Come From and How to Have Better Ones

Chapter 5. IN THE MOOD FOR INNOVATION

Particular emotional states (anger, depression, joy) seem to have played a role or were at least present at the moment of inspired thought in a number of cases. One is that of famed television producer Aaron Spelling and his origination of the idea for the hit TV show Fantasy Island, a show set on a fictional island in the Pacific Ocean where guests would pay fifty thousand dollars to come and live out their fantasies. As Spelling recalls, "Fantasy Island began as an argument. Leonard Goldberg [Spelling's production partner] and I were at ABC pitching TV movie ideas, but all of our best ones were getting shot down. The executives kept telling us that they didn't want sob stories, but ones with heat. Finally, I kinda' went crazy. I said, You guys don't really want a show! You don't want something with characters or plot or a story! You just want to have some sort of an island where you can go and act out all of your dumb fantasies ! And that is when they started jumping up and down shouting—Do it! Do it! Believe it or not, that's the truth."

On a much more somber note is the case of classical composer Robert Schumann. Robert Weisberg, a leading creativity scholar, professor of psychology, and director of the Brain, Behavior and Cognition Cluster at Temple University, sought to test a hypothesis that "being in a manic state can increase the creativity of the thought processes." He chose Schumann since the composer was known to have suffered from ...