tavis: good evening. from los angeles, i am tavis smiley. nine, a conversation about one of this year's most talked- about best sellers. he explored the roots of the imagination and creativity and how the ideas are born featuring real world examples american culture and iconic features like shakespeare, dylan, and yo yo ma. >> every community has a martin luther king boulevard. it's the cornerstone we all know. it's not just a street or boulevard, but a place where walmart stands together with your community to make every day better. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

tavis: he is a contributing editor at wired magazine his work has been featured in the new yorker. it is easily one of the most talked-about and best-selling books in the world. could have you here. let me jump right in. how do we create, then, what never existed? >> is a complicated than. we blame our best ideas and outsource the imagination to the gods above. the good news is that we don't need them uses up in the sky,

everything comes from these 3 pounds of meat inside the head. it is important to know the size and to know how the process happens so we can learn to get more creative. the science is telling us that creativity, we assume it is a single fan. if it turns out it is a term for a variety of distinct thought processes, each of which is essential at different parts of the creative process. sometimes you need to drink a triple espresso and go over edit after edit, sometimes you need a moment of insight. a big breakthrough that happens when you least expect it. or having a beer on the couch. there are all these different ways of thinking, each of which is essential. are there prerequisites

or conditions that make those moments, as you put them, of great insight, a more plausible? regular? possible? >> in recent years, scientists have begun to be constructed these moments of insight. that is one of the defining features of a moment of insight, it comes out of the blue. and that as soon as it appears, you know it is the answer. you know that this is this. and what scientists have discovered, people are much more likely to have the moment of insight when they are relaxed. most of us assume that when you give us a really hard problem, you need to have more caffeine and stay late at the office, that is the exact wrong thing to do. tavis: now you tell me.

>> is a wonderful justification for going on vacation and taking a break. your brain is telling you you need a moment of insight. have a beer. last month, undergraduates that were legally drunk scored a 30% higher on these very difficult creative problems that require moments of insight. that is because you are more relaxed and more likely to daydream. a lot of the things that we assume make us look like we're wasting time are essential. if einstein was right when he said creativity is the residue of wasted time. it is important to make time. >> they will see this as a justification for keg parties. >> when your brother, you have to still think a little bit about the problems. you need to maintain 1 foot old

and awareness. >> getting stomped is good for creativity? >> an essential part of the process. that is what you do after that, what happens next. your brain tells you that you need to think differently. it is not working anymore. tell your boss i am going to go play pingpong or do whatever it is a need to do to stop thinking about this problem because the answer will only arrived after i cease looking for it. >> i have visited a couple of these major social networking and silicon valley out in california, a number of these high-tech companies, and you walked into a veryaid-back, relaxed, and these campuses where they have figured out that putting people in an environment where they get a

chance to think had a dream. -- and daydream. this is facebook? this creativity comes out of lazy -- >> there is a reason for that. it is a scientific justification. when you ask people to solve very difficult problems, they're going to need end in sight. it is important to give them to freedom to take a break. the other thing i always notice is that all of the people making small talk. there are some of the best chatter and conversations in the most innovative spaces throughout history that are about forcing people to mix and mingle. the studios and designed by steve jobs, the original plan called for three separate

buildings. he said that as a terrible idea, success is going to depend on getting people from these different cultures to interact and constantly collaborate. he insisted everyone share the same space. he realized it was not enough, you need to make people mix and mingle, so he carved out the atrium. he put the gift store, mailboxes, cafeteria, even that is not enough. and you can build people at a cafeteria, but the animators would have lunch with the animators. he insisted there be only two bathrooms and the entire studios in this vast warehouse. it is one place we all have to go every and all day, the bathroom. you had to walk all the way across the office to go to the

bathroom, but now you hear all these stories of these great bathroom breakthroughs and a great conversation you had a washing your hands or the cat in the hallway on the way your bathroom. creativity is connecting things and most of those connections come from other people. >> tell me more about how his creativity came to the four. >> jobs himself didn't invent the movies epics are for the ipod, ipad, or iphone, but he could get scientists and designers to work together to constantly collaborate. and you see that first and foremost at pixar, where people can really problems altogether. one thing i took away from that wonderful biography of jobs was

that he could be a very difficult man to work for. and that is putting it mildly. but getting back to the best way to get back to ideas as with a brutal honesty. he was closer to the brutal side. they find a way to really make criticism part of the creative process. it turns out that the opposite is true. it forces us to dig a little bit deeper. those are some things we can all learn from steve jobs. tavis: in defense of him to the brutal point you are making, i wonder how it is that as a society we gravel whole -- grab a hold. people are so touchy, if you say

the wrong thing nor do the wrong thing, you are subject to a lawsuit. some just don't take kindly to your honest and harsh critique. how do we start to embrace the fact that part of creativity is excepting that? >> and the signs can be helpful. take the most popular technique of all time, brainstorming. no criticism allowed. the assumption being the imagination is meek and shy, and if it is worried about being criticized, it will clam up. we can come to room and we can contribute to ideas, helen gets their feelings hurt. the only problem is that it just doesn't work. study after study showed that

when we brainstorm together, we become less than the sum of our parts. it really gets back to the first rule of brainstorming, and no criticism. groups that engage in debate and dissent, they come up with 25%- 40% ideas that are more original. when there is no criticism, we flew along the superficial surface of the imagination. when there is criticism, and it better be constructive. they knew little bit deeper and you are fully engaged. you try to figure out how to solve this problem. it turns out to be a much more effective strategy. we live and data that is touchy, and we have to get better at realizing that criticism is just part of the process. it is going to involve making

some mistakes, taking risks, and suffering through a failure. you have to fail fast. point out how you are failing and point out mistakes before it is too late. >> i want to give another example of how you begin to genius. allotted to pick yom law because there's a connection between jobs. he played at his memorial service. i am back to something where these two guys are connected, but having said that, what as a musician. >> the reason that i wanted to write about him and spend some time on him is because if what role was defined his performance for me is how expressive he is, he's incredibly intricate works

of classical music, and you watch him perform, and he is weighing with the music and you find yourself getting moved by these abstract works of art in these sound waves of floating through space. i wanted to understand how, in the midst of this stage he finds a way to let himself go. there is very interesting science that lives in the act of improvisation. how cold frame could step on stage for 45 minutes and trust that he will put duty out of his instrument. how do we let ourselves go when we should not be so nervous? scientists have found this by studying jazz pianists, improvising a brain scanner, once you are trained and an expert jazz musician, who are able to inhibit your inhibitions, able to deactivate

heart of the brain just beyond the year for hand. it keeps us from eating all the ice cream as saying the first thing that comes and keeps us from acting without thinking. but it can also get and the way of creativity. you need to let yourself go like coal train or miles davis. if you need to just create without worrying about what you are creating. if you worry about the wrong note, you will freeze up on stage. if there's anything we can learn, at some point in the process, we need to learn to let ourselves go. tavis: whether you're talking cold rain, polonius month comes to mind. their creativity is concerned her was concerned, there were often told that what they were doing was wrong. coal train her that time and

time again. why are you playing so loud and fast? to aias' month said he got point where he would tell people what they thought was wrong is right because his chords were off. we look back at these people as being wonderfully creative, but in that moment of their actual creativity, they were told they were not. >> this is what you often see with the most creative people. it doesn't matter if it is a new kind of product or art form, if you are really original, people will say that it is just wrong. there, don't play was play was not there. this is what amazes me, somehow knowing what you're doing, trusting that what you're doing is going to out last all of the

criticism, and that takes an act of such supreme self-confidence. that is just trusting that is beautiful, i don't care what you're saying. >> a great writer once suggested that everybody boroughs, but the great ones steel. how much of our creativity is not about doing something that has not been done before, but taking what someone else has offered and putting it in your own flavor. there is nothing new under the sun, we all take things -- >> there is a lot of truth in that. one of the things that make creativity seem so difficult for people, we assume that you make the big breakthroughs out of midair. it turns out they're really just

combinations of the ideas or one that worked in one fear -- a field. think of the printing press, it was just wine press technology from the fifteenth century, but he said he could apply it to the printed word. or the google search algorithm. they have this idea to work for academic articles that have more citations were seen as more influential so you can rank the influence, they could apply the same logic to the world wide web. these ideas, in retrospect, seem like such a big breakthroughs, but they are just combinations of old ideas. moving that idea to another domain. someone once asked him to describe his creative process. you fall in love with something

and you steal it and making your own. there is a lot of truth in that. you see that for artists that are so influenced that they find a way to internalize these lines or melodies that a fall in love with. then they end and from there. and they make their own. tavis: this is an oversimplified question, but what are the things that you discover that keep us from being are most creative souls? >> one thing is this narrow definition of what affect the thinking looks like. we teach it in the classroom and in force in the workplace. we assume that you need to focus, be it your cubicle, looking at the computer screen. we say not to daydream, look at the blackboard. sometimes we need to focus and attention is necessary, but when you look at the questions from the perspective of creativity,

people that are more destructible, as long as they have a moderately high iq, there are seven times more likely to be creative achievers. it means you're combining ideas in new ways. a daydream turns out to be great for creativity. we need to teach our kids have to be productive day dreamers. many to take into account the sides, if you're asking people to solve difficult problems, you have to let them do stuff that as unproductive. take that out, get relaxed. and these are some of the things that we really need to work on. a larger thing we need to do is force ourselves to spend time with people that think differently. there is a wonderful study done by a sociologist at princeton and attract several hundred graduates that wanted to start their own company and he wanted to talk about social networks

influencing innovation. he found that those who have a more diverse social networks and spent time with people not at all like them, computer scientists have spent time with novelist and filmmakers, there were three times more innovative than those with predictable social networks. this is true. it is important to spend time with people that think differently because they will provide new ideas. tavis: you offered some actual concrete ideas about how you might want to embrace text in the workplace, and it is helping creativity as professionals, how might the ideas that you're offering challenge us to rethink education.

>> 95% that of the draw. of the time they are high school seniors, 90% of kids are convinced they are not creative. over 12 years of school, we convince most is that they are not creative, we have officially killed it off. the good news is that picasso is right, we have to find a way cannot kill creativity. find a way to sustain something in just about every little kid that loves to paint or draw. something's involved bringing art education back. i think that should not come at the expense of letting kids do stuff that they enjoy. maybe it is sports, there is a scientist.

she studies a character trait about single mindedness and persistence. field after field, they're often the best predictor of success. they predict if a kid can graduate from high school, it can't predict if they will win the spelling bee, and she is showing it is very important. how can we build that up in our kids? she has a wonderful maximum. choose easy, work hard. it is very important when kids are young to expose them to love of vodka activities that they might fall in love with. maybe it is culture or football or basketball, playing the saxophone. let them find that activity that does not feel like work. then remind them every day to work harder because they will put in 10,000 hours of practice.

it matters a lot, and if you're going to get into business or be creative, you will need that in all of those fields. the way we build it up in our kids, this is counter intuitive. letting them do stuff that feels like fun. tavis: i am laughing internally because it is great advice for both kids and adults. doing that thing that comes natural for you. shoe's easy, work hard. gosh -- >> to get good at anything, you'll have to put in lots of practice. that is what it takes. tavis: there are a lot of people out comparing your work who malcolm but well, which is high praise, five books on the list at any one time.

how young are you? >> i am almost 31. tavis: how did you get turned on by this side and making it understandable for every day people like us? >> malcolm was a big influence. he is a master storyteller. can we take it for a test drive? can we make it relevant to people? his work has always been a big influence on me. it really began because i was not cut out for science. and to go back to choose easy, work hard, the manual labor of science i wasn't good at. i love talking to scientists, asking them questions and figuring out how those ideas connect everyday life.

whether it is a saxophonist improvising or someone tweaking a gadget trying to understand using the new science to make sense of ourselves. >> i think you will see him on the best-seller list for many years to come. he is the author of the previous attack, his newest one is called a imagine how. honored to have you on for the first time and i hope not the last. that is our show tonight. i will see you next time on pbs. i think you for watching and as always, keep the faith. >> for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. tavis: hi, i'm tavis smiley. join me next time for a

conversation with former secretary of state: powell and his latest book, "it worked for me." see you then. >> every community has a martin luther king boulevard. it's the cornerstone we all know. it's not just a street or boulevard, but a place where walmart stands together with your community to make every day better. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.