Comstock's magazine 1217 - December 2017 | Page 61

ASSOCIATE (LIKE A WEIRDO)
Einstein
once
described
the
creative process as “combinatorial
play,” meaning the art of joining
things together. This is where all
that observing, consuming and
questioning pays off. “When the brain
is actively absorbing new knowledge,
it is more likely to trigger connections
between ideas, thus creating a wider
web of neural connections,” explain
Christensen, Dryer and Gregersen.
“In our research, every high-profile
innovator excelled at associating.”
Weber agrees. “Sometimes inno-
vation is just about saying, ‘Hey, this
already exists, and that already exists,
so why isn’t someone connecting these
two things?’” Airbnb, for example,
connected pockets of unused or un-
derutilized housing with people who
needed a bed. Uber did the same for
cars.
If you ask Jennings, this knack for
associational thinking might go hand
in hand with, well, just being a touch
different. “Innovators are a little
more,” she pauses, searching for the
right word, “quirky than the rest of us.
Many of them don’t really fit in. They
speak a bit differently, they interpret
the world differently — and that allows
them to be a little more creative, and
think outside the box.”
And while it's tough to tell some-
one to just “be weird” in the hopes of
f lexing their creativity, it's also true
that an accepting — and encourag-
ing — environment can make all the
difference. “The reality is that the
environment impacts the people as
much as the people impact the envi-
ronment,” says White, who dreams of
seeing Sacramento as a “living labora-
tory,” a test-bed for new ideas. “How do
we make sure that anyone who wants
to do something new, they try it in Sac-
ramento?”
Box, formerly of HP, is already see-
ing the early signs of this laboratory.
“I don’t think we thought of ourselves
as a very innovative environment 10 or
20 years ago,” she says. “But in the last
five years? It’s changing. We’re focus-
ing attention on innovation, and it’s
working. I love it.” n
Jeff Wilser is the author of The Book
of Joe: The Life, Wit, and (Sometimes
Accidental) Wisdom of Joe Biden.
@Jeff Wilser.
December 2017 | comstocksmag.com
61