Isaac Asimov on Creativity

Written By Travis Hinkle

The Creative Rebellion • Dispatch #014 • 2.5 min. read

How do people get new ideas?

This is a question many of us wonder, even as creatives. We don't always understand how we come up with new ideas. But in a world increasingly powered by AI, copy/paste creativity, reboots, and remakes, new ideas (originality) will make your work stand out from the sea of sameness.

So, how do we get new ideas?

Back in 1959, Arthur Obermayer, a scientist at Allied Research Associates in Boston, was part of a team tasked by the government to think "out of the box" to come up with creative approaches for a ballistic missile defense system. He asked his friend, ​Isaac Asimov​, a prolific sci-fi author who wrote and edited over 500 books in his 53-year career, to help.

Although Asimov only attended a few meetings before leaving the project, he did write an essay on creativity that was never published anywhere else. In 2014, it was shared on the MIT Technology Review as: ​Isaac Asimov Asks, “How Do People Get New Ideas?”​ - A 1959 Essay by Isaac Asimov on Creativity.

A lot of the essay is on how to work creatively as a group, but Asimov had a very important point about how the best creative ideas usually come when an individual is working alone.

Of course, new ideas can seem obvious once someone else has come up with them, but the process of arriving at new ideas involves several crucial factors. Here's the basic formula Asimov gave for creativity:

  • Proficiency

what is needed is not only people with a good background in a particular field, but also people capable of making a connection between item 1 and item 2 which might not ordinarily seem connected.

  • Daring

The requirement to make that connection between item 1 and item 2 is "daring." A creative person who is:

willing to fly in the face of reason, authority, and common sense must be a person of considerable self-assurance. Since he occurs only rarely, he must seem eccentric (in at least that respect) to the rest of us.

  • Isolation

My feeling is that as far as creativity is concerned, isolation is required. The creative person is, in any case, continually working at it. His mind is shuffling his information at all times, even when he is not conscious of it.

The presence of others can only inhibit this process, since creation is embarrassing. For every new good idea you have, there are a hundred, ten thousand foolish ones, which you naturally do not care to display.

So what's the equation for a creative person who is capable of coming up with new ideas?

Proficiency in their field + ability to make a connection between 2 disparate ideas + a dash of daring + a bit of eccentricity + isolation = original ideas

Simple enough, right?

Do you struggle coming up with original ideas or with executing on your ideas?

Stay rebellious,

Travis

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Quick Inspiration

Deeper Inspiration

Atomic Habits by James Clear​

Little things done consistently over a long period of time make a big difference. (4.8 stars on Amazon, 4.4 stars on Goodreads)

Travis Hinkle
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