You Can't Tame a Genius!

Meet the Consultant!

Have you heard of Ram Charan? 

It's highly unlikely that you did. I certainly didn't before working on this piece. But most CEOs of the top Fortune 500 did, and they consider him to be The Rain Man of management. Back in 2007, Fortune Magazine wrote a lengthy detailed profile on the exotic life style of Ram Charan, and the opening statement was:

"What he does is hard to describe. But the most powerful CEOs love it enough to keep him on the road 24/7 and make him the most influential consultant alive."Charn's life is anything but ordinary. A typical week of his is normally composed of daily traveling around the globe, across the 7 continents catering to the needs to multibillion dollars corporates. He's so extraordinary at what he does that Ivan Seidenberg, CEO of the giant communications company Verizon says "I love him. He's my secret weapon."An investigation at Charn's early life revels a hard working, highly driven individual. This is a snapshot of the past 40 years of Charn's life:This is his 37th year working for GE, his 33rd for DuPont. He has been with Ivan Seidenberg at least 20 years, and with former West Virginia Governor Gaston Caperton more than 30 years.In contemporary terms, the reason why Ran Charan is an exceedingly proclaimed consultant is because he is an expert. And through the past 40 years he has been cultivating these expertise and created an unparalleled track of extraordinary accomplishments.'Experts' psychologist Anders Ericsson tells us that a person needs at least 10 years (more accurately: 10,000 hours) of deliberate practice to achieve true mastery. It seems the brain needs that amount of time to comprehend an apprenticeship.Experts in today's world manage companies. They know so much about the business that business owners like to keep them around. Their vast knowledge it too valuable to be squandered.However, this post isn't a celebration of corporate or management experts. Nor to undermined them. In this post I want to discuss the particulars that separate Experts from Geniuses. Charn is a good example of an expert; he's a loyal corporate person, committed to a job, reliable and, like most other professionals, his job comes first.

But is he a Genius?

A 'Genius'?

'Genius' is a tricky term. Derived from the Roman word 'genii ', it originally meant the spirit that possess a person at given time, since those 'individuals' accomplishments were so exceptional and couldn't be explained. Media have distorted the term: they anchored geniuses with the 'crazy scientists' look working in a lap and microscoping down on a Petri dish with his shaggy hair and broken glasses or running around the streets naked and shouting 'Eureka, Eureka!!'
But this is a limited description of geniuses are like. The closest way to describe them would be "Intellectual Mavericks." But the term still demands further clarification. We often lump geniuses with scientific advances. That's probably why when we hear the term, we directly construct a mental image of people like Albert Einstein and Steven Hawking.
In this post I want to challenge those assumptions, and expand on what a genius is ought to be.
Just like experts, geniuses, too need their own 10,000 hours of deliberate practice; this requires an enormous amount of dedication and hard work. But what truly separates experts from geniuses, in my opinion, is the operating system. Geniuses operate on an entrepreneurial operating system; they take risks for what they feel passionate for. Experts on the other hand, don't have that luxury. Their operating system can't depend on chances or miracles. They operate to meet quarter deadlines and cooperate dividends. Geniuses create breakthroughs and paradigm shifts. Experts capitalize and optimize on those breakthroughs. Geniuses are artist. Experts are executors. Geniuses have inspirational mentors. Experts have managers.
The telling difference between those two concepts is the mindset. For us to appreciate what distinct between an expert and a genius, we need an example of a genius like we did for experts. And Hollywood is a good place to start.

Meet the Genius!

What is the common factor between The Lion King, Crimson Tide, Gladiator, The Last Samurai, The Dark Knight, and Inception; other than the fact that they're either Oscars winners or nominees?
A reasonable assumption would be that they share the same director. But they don't. And no one actor had starred in all of them. Nor were they written by the same author.Strangely, the common factor among them is something that lingers in the background: music. Those movies shared one composer: Hans Zimmer. Hans is a truly remarkable innovator, and throughout the past 20 years he scored an Oscar, and been nominated for a total of 8 Oscars. He's composed for over 100 movies through his illustrious carrier.

And if you were to list your top 10 movies from the past 20 years, chances are Zimmer composed one or more of them.
What makes Hanz Zimmer a genius? In essence: he's a risk taker. His unorthodox style of combining the old musical schools with the new musical technologies has earned him a unique reputation. He creates captivating art. His works can't be quantified. They aren't measured by quarter earnings; rather by how deeply impactful it was. And in order to produce such, you've to be adventurous. But experts can be adventurous, can't they? That mindset is attainable. Right?
Believe it or not, it's not that easy. They have followed rigid disciplines throughout their lives, starting from conventional education to control-based work environments. They're soaked in a sea of strictness.
A good distinction of what separates experts from geniuses comes from Neil Gaiman in his speech to the University of the Arts, describes what cripples experts:"People who know what they are doing know the rules and they know what is possible and what is impossible. You do not, and you should not. The rules on what is possible and impossible in the arts were made by people who had not tested the bounds of the possible by going beyond them. And you can. If you don't know it's impossible, it's easier to do.
And because nobody's done it before, they haven't made up rules to stop anyone doing that particular thing again."
The curious part is that both Hans Zimmer and Neil Gaiman held a dislike to formal education. In fact, they didn't pursue it. They operated in a world of their own invention, and they created the rules there. Unlike the experts who have to answer the board of directors.

A Trait of Geniuses!

Let's take the idea of how could institutionalized thinking paralyze creativity a step further.

Here is a list of arguably the top 9 novels in the past 200 years or so. Keep in mind while reading the following: Those writers are on this list not because they scored best sellers or achieved a level of celebritism. Rather, because their ideas have created paradigm shifts:

Anna Karenina
Madame Bovary
Lolita
To Kill a Mocking Bird
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Great Gatsby
In Search of Lost Time
The Stories of Anton Chekhov
1984

Now, let's run a quick analysis of the masters who created them:

Anna Karenina: written by Leo Tolstoy. And what did he study? law and oriental languages at Kazan University. In fact his teachers described him as "both unable and unwilling to learn." And later on, Tolstoy left university in the middle of his studies. He started writing after he joined the army.

Madame Bovary: written by the French author Gustave Flaubert. And just like Tolstoy, he studied Law. And just like Tolstoy, he was an uninterested student.
Lolita: third person on our list is the Russian Vladimir Nabokov. He enrolled at Trinity College, Cambridge, majored in Zoology at first, and then Slavic and Romance languages. He later drew on his Cambridge experiences to write the novel Glory.
To Kill a Mocking Bird: written by Haper Lee. She went to the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa. She enrolled in law studies. After her first year in the law program, Lee began expressing to her family that writing—not Law—was her true calling. She went to Oxford University in England that summer as an exchange student. Returning to her law studies that fall, Lee dropped out after the first semester and moved to New York City to pursue her hopes to become a writer.The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: The American Mark Twain, he educated himself in Liberal Arts.
The Great Gatsby: authored by the great American novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald. At the age of 16, he was expelled from the St. Paul Academy for neglecting his studies. He later on joined Princeton University. He's academic curriculum there was unknown.
In Search of Lost Time: written by the French author Marcel Proust. Proust enrolled at the Lycée Condorcet, a French school, but his education was disrupted because of his illness.The Stories of Anton Chekhov: a Russin short story writer. He gained admission to Moscow University where he studied for a medical degree and became a prominent physician.
1984: The great influential novelist George Orwell. His family couldn't afford to send him to a proper university, and he failed to obtain a scholarship. Through external pressure he ended up working for the Indian Police Service.
The array shows a pretty consistent pattern, doesn’t? The authors of the most influential and memorable literature productions had to departure from conventional education. And why wouldn't they? It would have told them what is possible and what is impossible. Education would have smothered their passion and turned them in experts; someone who optimizes the works of others.

Albert Einstein held a similar grudge toward formal education. Read the following from the essay 'Einstein As a Student' by Dudley Herschbach of Harvard University:"He did well, both in primary and high school, but "the style of teaching in most subjects was repugnant to him."Especially galling at the Gymnasium was the 'military tone...the systematic training in the worship of authority.'"And what of his passion for intellectual prowess? Well, it wasn't the product of formal education. Rather it was an all- in the family effort. Here is Herschbach again:"Albert's intellectual growth was strongly fostered at home. His mother, a talented pianist, ensured the children's musical education. His father regularly read Schiller and Heine aloud to the family. Uncle Jakob challenged Albert with mathematical problems, which he solved with a deep feeling of happiness."

The Intellectual Mavericks!

Allow me herein, to present one finale example of how difficult it's for geniuses to fit with formal rigid methods because it tames their spirits. Someone who is just as famous and influential as Albert Einstein: Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who led the American efforts to develop the nuclear bomb during World War II. It could safely be said that this man had held one of the most important jobs of the twentieth century!

Robert Oppenheimer with Albert Einstein

As a student, Oppenheimer pursued his doctorate in physics at Cambridge University. There, he faced a repentant problem. His gift was for theoretical physics, but his adviser, a future Nobel prize winner by the name Patrick Blackett forced him to go for experimental physics, which Oppenheimer disliked. To resolve this obstacle, Oppenheimer, in an outrageously strange act, devised a plan to avoid experimental physics. He snuck into a laboratory, smuggled some chemicals and tried to poison his adviser! Luckily the adviser sensed that something was a mess and survived. Oppenheimer was subjected to therapy.


You can't tame a genius!

Geniuses, it should be pointed out, aren't always separated from education. They need to acquire knowledge from somewhere. It's just they don't function well under rigid management!Most of us, I can safely assume, are future experts. Except the lucky ones, all of us have been subjected to conventional education were control replaced engagement, orders replaced autonomy, and monetary rewards replaced passion.But are we condemned to this fact? I strongly believe we're not. We are born to seek enlightenment, in whichever form it may come. Just look at the array presented up there of creative geniuses, they all made the decisions and sought control and mastery. They realized that their inner fire could be extinguished, and they repelled. They took a risk, and now we're enjoying the fruits of their decisions. Any highly motivated, hard working individual can optimize a system. With proper knowledge and education, we can all become experts. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, some individuals make a conscious, rational decisions to serve an entity. But the outcomes of conventional education predetermined that this is the way we all ought to be. It stripped of our chances. But knowledge doesn't only come via that entity. It can be sought elsewhere; it comes in various forms and vast options.Take the opportunity, seek your true self and embrace it. Your happiness is your own responsibility.

The Sum of All Frustration

The inspiration behind this essay manifested from this poster here. This is not to undermine virtue the poster is encouraging. Rather, it's about the healthiness of the information presented here. 

The story claims that Bill Gates's son: Rory John (Gates has only one son and two daughters.) paid a fairly unusual tip to the waiter, who blamed Gates for his 'despicable tip' to which Gates replied: "He's the son of a billionaire, I'm the son of a farmer." The author of this 'story' has committed two fallibilities: the first one is that Gates's father was a prominent lawyer, not a farmer. The second fallibility is the fact that Gates's son, Rory John, was born in 1999, meaning he's 13 years old now (assuming the poster was fabricated in 2012, and not earlier), which makes me doubt he goes around giving $ 100 tips to waiters. The mentioned above makes one wonder: how often are we deceived by presented information? The problem is we became too passive to question a given content.

This issue of blind acceptance has escalated in the past century that economist John K. Galbraith coined a term to describe it: Conventional Wisdom. And what is conventional wisdom? Well, to quote Galbraith:
"We associate truth with convenience with what most closely accords with self-interest and personal well-being or promises best to avoid awkward effort or unwelcome dislocation of life. We also find highly acceptable what contributes most to self-esteem."      From the upper essay, one observes how dangerous conventional wisdom could be. And over the past 50 years or so, economists dedicated an extraordinary amount of time combating it. 

Professor Steven D. Levitt, co-author of the groundbreaking book: Freakonomics, has tackled the issue of conventional wisdom and produced several conclusions. For the purposes of this essay, I'll borrow two of them: conventional wisdom explanations that are generally accepted as true, is not necessarily true. The other conclusion is about its roots; Levitt holds journalists responsible for the infectiousness of conventional wisdom.

But is that a fair declaration? Are we really that susceptible to media? Let's examine this claim.

Dr. Joseph Goebbels believed in two perceptions . To quote him properly: "Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play."  And he believed as well that "If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth."

And who was Dr. Joseph Goebbels? He was the 'propaganda minister' to Adolf Hitler's regime. At his era, Goebbels controlled every possible form of publications, ranging from newspaper, book, novel, play, film, broadcast and concert, and from the level of nationally-known publishers and orchestras to local newspapers and village choirs.Gobbles managed a tight censorship of what people read and watched. And no one can deny the devastating success of his endeavors. 

But returning to our modern media dilemma, are we much more alert to these kinds of modern deceptions? Or we just as susceptible as our predecessors were? My overwhelming conclusion says we are victims. 

Let's microscope down on a very recent example: Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or, to use its more common name: the mad cow disease. If you were an adult born somewhere in the mid 80s, chances of you being familiar with the disease are high. And chances are higher that you stopped eating cow-related products for a long while.
There was a terror spreading around the globe regarding this topic. But let's read the accounts of Nassim Taleb, author of Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan:

"In that sense the depiction coming from journalism is certainly not just an unrealistic representation of the world but rather the one that can fool you the most by grabbing your attention via your emotional apparatus – the cheapest to deliver sensation. Take the mad cow “threat” for example: Over a decade of hype, it only killed people (in the highest estimates) in the hundreds as compared to car accidents (several hundred thousands!) — except that the journalistic description of the latter would not be commercially fruitful. (Note that the risk of dying from food poisoning or in a car accident on the way to a restaurant is greater than dying from mad cow disease.) This sensationalism can divert empathy toward wrong causes: cancer and malnutrition being the ones that suffer the most from the lack of such attention. Malnutrition in Africa and Southeast Asia no longer causes the emotional impact — so it literally dropped out of the picture. In that sense the mental probabilistic map in one’s mind is so geared toward the sensational that one would realize informational gains by dispensing with the news." 

But why we, and by 'we' I mean: mankind, befell vulnerable to conventional wisdoms and almost defenseless in the face media? The answers to this question might be countless and I defiantly can't claim I have them all. But I'll pinpoint what I deem to be the main culprit: Formal Education. 

Is this an exaggerated allegation? I think not. We as a society, place an enormous faith in education. And throughout our childhood and most of our adulthood, education has ruthlessly stripped us of intellectual prowess. It told us what it believed is important and usually undermined what we felt passionate for. It governed us with control rather than engagement, compliance rather than autonomy. 

And the outcome of this? We lost curiosity.We lost the value of questioning, testing and experimenting. We confirmed to superior institutions; even when they were/are wrong. And gradually we lost faith in ourselves and submitted it to something else.  

   

Is it any wonder that we can blindly be shepherded? I think not. The real trick is to force ourselves from this zone we've been confined to and seek knowledge and enlightenment elsewhere. We ought to push ourselves out of the comfort zone into the learning zone. 

We need to entangle ourselves with different cultures. 

After all, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), globally proclaimed entity famed for its innovation, has no major ethnicity among its students, and it hosts students from over 115 countries. It's an institution that realized the importance of diversity. We need to accept the fact that our inherited principles aren't always right. We need to examine our intellectual legacies, and this can't be done when our minds are shut to the outside worlds. We're not forever enslaved by passivity. This is an invitation to combat mental conformity. And it can be accomplished through diversity, curiosity and true enlightenment.

The Deep Blue Error

In a small room in the Pennsylvania Convention Center, 3 p.m, 10^th of February, 1996, a historic occasion was about to emerge. Positioned in the middle of the room, there was a Chessboard. 

A Chess match of strange dimensions is going to take place here.

On one side, smartly dressed, sat down Garry Kasparov, Russian, and by agreed-upon accounts: the greatest Chess player of all times. Mr. Kasparov, by that time, had held the Chess championship for straight 10 years and had surpassed many of his chess grand masters peers by extraordinary lengths. To put it short: his accomplishments in that realm were unparalleled.

On the other end of the Chessboard, sat a gentleman by the name Feng-Hsuing Hsu. Yet he wasn't Kasparov opponent. Curiously, he was a computer scientist by profession, and his role at that room that day was to assist Kasparov real opponent: Deep Blue. Deep blue wasn't, or couldn't, be there.

It's noteworthy that Deep Blue wasn't intimidated by Kasparov ravishing reputation. Deep Blue, as it turns out, is an IBM computer.

This match, as rightfully hyped by the media, was the ultimate match between men and machines. The event was the stuff Hollywood movies are made off. The Terminator Vs. John Connor kind of match. There was a romantic flare about it. Human dignity was on the line as Kasparov mentioned prior to the game. The tension level in that room must have been off the roof.

The magnitude of inequalities in favor of Deep Blue was humongous; Kasparov, for example, knew it would be pointless to utilize his mental tricks with his adversary. But the most telling disadvantage was the fact that Kasparov, with his human mental capacity, could only calculate 3 moves ahead per second. Deep Blue calculated more 100 million moves per second. Deep Blue, in the language of human psychology, was overwhelmingly talented.

The game was set for 6 matches; the opponent with most winnings will be declared the winner. The game lasted 8 days.It captivated the world. In the first match Deep Blue beat Kasparov, putting a dint in the champion's record, and a larger one at the spectators' faith for a human to win over machine.
However, by February 17^th, Kasparov had won two matches, and drew two others. The score was tied. The audience breath had lessened as the concluding match started. And by the end of the match, Kasparov emerged victorious.

Humanity prevailed.

Here is a collection of noteworthy questions: how did that happen? How did a limited functioning brain, with all the disadvantages accompanying it, had beaten a peerless performing machine? We know it wasn't luck. Luck is when you win the toss of a coin. It wasn't intelligence; Deep Blue, metaphorically, had a staggering intelligence comparing to that of Kasparov. It could calculate per second 100 million moves against Kasparov's 3 moves. So what was it?

The answer to this question is a lot less straight forward than we might think. There might have been lots of factors that groomed the victory of Kasparov, but for the purposes of this post, I'll focus on one. And it requires the abandonment of some false believes we've accumulated. But we are getting ahead of ourselves.

First thing we need to understand is that, contrary to old convictions, success in chess doesn't come from intellectual analytical prowess. Rather, it comes from memory.

Of course, I realize, there's something counterintuitive about that statement. But let's listen to the accounts of the performance studies expert, psychologist K. Anders Ericsson; he tells us that extraordinary performances aren't talent based, they're based on years of deep, purposeful deliberate practice. Factors like passion, patience, and the willingness to improve play a major role in transforming the human mind, thus distinguishing the expert from the novice.

The most distinctive factor about experts is their minds' mechanism of interpreting given information. It's unique. Upon several tests, it showed that experts when looking at human endeavors, Chessboard for example, they don't only see Chess pieces and black and white squares; they translate them into familiar patterns, words and pictures; their minds recall the images of previous experiences and it aids them to extract meaningful information that novices wouldn't comprehend. 

But non-experts face another problem.

Harvard psychologist George Miller in his famous essay "The Magical Number Seven" states that human ability to process information and make decisions is fundamentally constrained by memory; we can only process seven things at a given time, plus or minus two. When we encounter a situation, our working memory registers only around 7 facts. That's why phone numbers are only 7 digits. It's our built-in processing capacity. Working memory, it should be pointed out, is affected by emotions like arousal, intimidation, and pinking; which could impose further crippling constrains.

But is the working memory limited? Are we truly condemned to the number 7?

Ericsson has marvelously illustrated what it takes to un-limit that constrain. In his human performance lab, he brought in policemen; some were fresh out of the police academy, and some were experienced veterans. In his lab, there's an almost wall size screens displaying situations where a culprit was misbehaving. Ericsson's goal was to compare how the fresh grads and the experts dealt with the disturbing situation. The results were astonishing.

It took the fresh grads longer times to handle the situation, and in most cases, the culprit has escaped; they couldn’t make sense of the situation and what needed to be done. Experts, on the other hand, processed the situation differently; they weren't constrained by 7 factors, they had the advantage of reading situations in the way only experts can see: pattern recognition. They sized up the situation quickly because somewhere in their unconscious memory they recognized certain clues and cues.

This is the ultimate gift of practice, it doesn't matter of your brain can process 3 moves or 100 million moves per second, your mind will leap beyond the trap of number 7 and react based on the stored data of thousands of hours playing Chess or chasing criminals. Their memory has expanded beyond the normal capacity. That’s something that can't be learned in a text book or a lecture.

Kasparov-Age 11, Vilnius, 1974

After reading this, it makes sense to understand the unforeseen victory Garry Kasparov over Deep Blue. Let's quickly view the chronicles of Kasparov. He started playing chess at the age of 10 under highly experienced couches. That was in 1964. And over the years he accumulated banks of knowledge and expertise that in 1980, he became the World Junior Champion. And since that time, he scored a cascade of championships.

In his match with Deep Blue, Kasparov was counting on more than his analytical rigor, he was relying on a bank of information that he started depositing in over 30 years ago.

Experts view the world differently. Ericsson states that they depend extensively on their vast knowledge, pattern-based retrieval abilities, and planning mechanisms acquired over many years of experience in the associated domains.

Here is Kasparov: "I simply understood the essence of the end game in a way the computer didn't. I'ts computational power wasn't enough to overcome my experience and intuitive appreciation of  where the pieces should go."

Hard work and purposeful practice are much more important than talent. We're not imprisoned by our level of intelligence. We can escape that. We can escape the limits of number 7. Experts from different domains; movie actors, athletes, computer programmers, and countless other endeavors are living proofs of that.

Counting on intelligence alone could be crippling; experience counts. That was the Deep Blue error. It didn't posses that savviness. But IBM had realized that shortcoming. On May 3^rd, 1997, Deep Blue faced  Kasparov again. This time, humanity failed.

How did Deep Blue beat Kasparov? It could be debated that IBM had upgraded the computer processing capabilities from 100 million to 200 million moves per second. But there was another factor they added and tipped the scale in favor of Deep Blue. IBM enriched the program with Chess grandmasters games with over 100 games. Deep Blue suddenly became more than just a machine; it had something it didn't have back then: vast experience. 

Trail and Error Vs. Google

A couple of years ago, I attended a semi-monthly intellectual gathering where people improve their leadership skills. One way was by improving their public speeches skills. During that meeting I was asked a surprising random question that, at the time, seemed nonsense.

The question was: can you imagine how life would be without electricity?

I stood there nervously, fumbled few random sentences and went back to my seat with two steaming hot red ears.

I must admit that the question haunted me that night: how would we live without electricity? But why would it? Why do I have to worry about such a fallible question? In fact, as it turned out, the question isn’t fallible at all.

Now, I can't stress how critical this question is, because in essence, electricity is a reflective metaphor for the age we inhabit now. Can you imagine surviving a day without Google, Facebook, or iPad? According to the internationally acclaimed author Marc Prensk, in a staggering study, kids spend over 10,000 hours playing videogames, over 200,000 emails and instant messages sent and received; over 10,000 hours talking on digital cell phones; over 20,000 hours watching TV. All before they turn 21. And more depressingly, at most, they read books for 5,000 hours. "Our students today are all native speakers of the digital language of computers, video games and the Internet." Says Marc Prenk,  "They're digital natives." Meaning they are born breathing the air of the digital world. The issue here is the illusion of sociability those digital natives inherent from those interactions. But meaningful human interactions differ between a multi user on-line game and real life.

I think we innately associate modern day advances to the existence of technologies such as Google. After all, there are roughly 91 million searches being performed on Google daily, and over 2 billion monthly according to Danny Sullivan, the founder and editor of SearchEngineWatch.com. That, it should be pointed out, is an enormous amount of information sought on Google. It makes you wonder to whom those questions were directed in the era of BG (Before Google).

We frequently attribute the success of modern revolutions to Twitter and Facebook. Social media seems to be the new face of expressing opinions.

But the problem is that when an invention is a success, we tend to celebrate its advantages, but neglect and overlook its side effects. Our infatuation takes over and blinds us to its perils.

Can you imagine how behind the world would be without those platforms?

I'm actually convinced with the contrary. If we're to study history, or the BG era, we will clearly find that our intellectual ancestors have survived, invented, innovated, led revolutions, and achieved scientific progresses without those platforms.

Can we say that we didn't find a cure for AIDS because Google doesn't provide enough access to information? Of course not. Real breakthroughs occur because of sheer passion, hard work, risk-taking and lots of trial and error. The economist Nassim Taleb says: "it is true that the more we search, the more likely we are to find things by accident, outside the original plan." And a prepared mind is someone who had accumulated knowledge about a certain topic till that person got a breakthrough. Perhaps that quote is understood best when we study the invention of radioactivity, Coke, plastic, Penicillin, and Viagra. What's common among those inventions? They were, respectively, invented in 1896, 1904, 1907, 1928, and 1992. All before the Information Technology revolution, or the BG era.

Was there a hashtag named #IHaveADream when Martin Luther King performed his speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial during the 1963 March on Washington for Freedom? How the 250,000 demonstrators did know when and where the march was happening? Definitely not following the account @MLKing. Those who attended there were there because of genuine anger and emotions. They followed the news because they were interested in the cause.

Some claim that we can end illiteracy if we had better equipped schools and if each student had an iPad. But is that true? Changes in the structure of education stem from the meaningful interaction between teachers and students. Sure, it would be nice and more efficient if each student had a laptop, but that doesn't replace the fact that change is defined and implemented through those who pursue it, not the tools. They help, but they aren't the main drive. You can't replace passion with an iPhone app.

In a study comparing reading from printed books, e-books on tablets and PCs, readers declared that reading a printed book was more relaxing and quicker than reading from those devices. The iPad measured at 6.2% lower reading speed than the printed book, whereas the Kindle measured at 10.7% slower than print.

Of course, this essay is not an invitation to dump the tools we have today, but rather to give credits were credits are due, and that's curiosity, passion, hard work, risk-taking acceptance, and trial and error. And a mind that's prepared with such an arsenal is more likely to score a breakthrough. Kindle of course is a device that has facilitated readings and opened new vistas to book-lovers, but that doesn't mean it'll overtake the value of printed book.

I would love to end here with a story that captures the essence and sums what I'm trying to say. Online writer engineer Mike Schaffner mentions a funny encounter when he received an email from a reader asking: shouldn't "don't won't" be "don’t want"? The reader was referring to an early article written by Mike. And Mike's explanation of the error was: "I put my brain on hold and over relied on technology, i.e. the spell checker, to make sure things were right." And that's the real problem with our infatuation with technology; we  think it makes life easy, but in fact it's taking over our intellectual prowess, and it shouldn't.

The Creation of Creativity

Have you heard of the name Matt Groening? Do you know him? Maybe you don't recognize the name, but I assure you: you've seen and enjoyed his work! He is an interesting individual when it comes the topic of creativity. His unparalleled achievements have changed the world of entertainment. And the story of how he came to accomplish that is a marvelous one.

"I understood the series of stages I was supposed to go through- you go to high school, you go to college, you get a credential, and then you go out and get a good job." Said Groening in his interview with the creativity guru Dr. Ken Robinson. "I knew it wasn't gonna work for me. I knew I was gonna be drawing cartoons forever."

Groening said that he and his friends, when were kids, shared a passion for drawings. "But gradually they peeled off and they got more serious." But for Groening, it was all about drawing. And in persuade of that passion, he traveled to Los Angles, and after several shots, he located a job with Fox Broadcasting Company and started a little animation show that developed with time. That show is famously known as the Simpsons.

Why did I tell the story of this artist? Because, in a sense, Groening defines creativity. His works over two decades have been transformed into movies, comics books, toy figures and translated to languages all over the world.

But to tell the story of Matt Groening this way is misleading. I deliberately hid essential parts of his story. Why? Because I needed to reintroduce the concept of creativity in different lights before we read the rest of Groening story so we can appreciate the small elements that led to his success and to point them out, so we don't take them for granted, and we lose their value.

So what's creativity?

To most people's understanding, creativity is an innate talent, a "born with" gift, that lucky individuals inherit them in their genes and excel in their carriers by capitalizing on those gifts. I'm assuming this is how most of us define and view this enigmatic notion of creativity. You either have it or you don't.

I believe that's just not true. Allow me to confer my argument. I consider this notion of creativity is despondent for two reasons: the first one, it gives us an excuse not to venture new things. We say: Oh well, I wasn't born with it, but my friend was, so he can utilize it. Lucky bastard!

The other risk is, it leaves us frustrated, because we think we can't and we're limited. And we start throwing statements like: she has it and I don't. It's not fair, God didn't create us equal.

Luckily, that's not true. And those are not some optimistic words I'm throwing around. It's a fact. And both historical and psychological accounts support my argument.

If we were to study a wide verity of creative innovators we will find an almost consistent pattern common among them. Whether we are discussing the realms of music, communications and technology, movies, novels… What are those commonalities?

First element of creativity: Copying! This contradicts our understanding of creativity, doesn't it? We tend to think of creativity as a divine inspiration. We usually associate it with terms like "a light bulb went on in my head" or "it stork me suddenly." But those the consequences of conventional wisdom. I believe the case is quite the opposite.

"It happens (meaning creativity) by applying ordinary tools of thought to existing materials." Says Kirby Ferguson.

If we study a wide range of popular creative innovations, like communication tools, cars, movies, stand up comedies… we will discover a pattern of copying and innovating.Those "innovators" tend to derive their work from existing materials.

But everyone can copy, right? So why isn't everyone creative? Well, It's about the touches we add to them, the wider knowledge we collect in various fields and artistically mix them, and about customizing the touches to our environment, it's about the needs we copy for. In an exponentially developing era, we constantly thrive for innovation to keep up. Those who copy blindly are bound to fail.

Most creative innovators are operating under the famous statement of Pablo Picasso "a good artist creates, great artist steals."

A quick example of modern creative innovation is Twitter. A sub-blog that allows to type in 140 characters, thus share what you're doing with the world. But in its original creation, Twitter is a mimic of cell phones SMS, "daylong brainstorming session" held by board members of the podcasting company Odeo. And eventually, this system evolved to foster over 200 million users around the world. All it needs is a keen observing eye, and the determination to believe you can make an impact, and the world will comply to your desires. 

And why Twitter limits us to only 140 characters? I believe it's a tradition the founders kept, which is adopted from the fact that for some telecommunication companies, exceeding 140 characters qualifies as a new text message.

Copying is an inevitable mean for creativity. At least in this case.

So what's the other element of creativity?

Simply: hard work! Practice! As Malcolm Gladwell so eloquently put it: "Practice isn't the thing you do once you're good. It's the thing you do that makes you good." 

And we can observe the importance of this "taken for granted" notion when we study the works of great achievers like Tiger Woods, Mozart, Steve Jobs, and countless others. They all share a common factor known as deliberate practice, a term coined by psychologist Anders Ericsson. Deliberate practice is working methodically and patiently on what we are passionate about. And with time we aggregate enough knowledge and techniques that allow us to master that craft, sociologists like to call it “accumulative advantage."

Creativity is not talent, nor giftedness. Just pure passion, wide accumulated knowledge, patience and loads of hard work.

The story of Matt Groening success is a beautiful illustration of how both elements of creativity work in rhythm: copying and hard work. As a kid in school Groening was attracted to drawing. In high school, during art class, he used to produce close to 30 paintings per class.

"There was the thrill of making something that didn't exist before." Groening says. As he got bored with meaningless drawings, he shifted his attention to another direction. "I started concentrating on stories and jokes. I thought that was more entertaining."

Groening was blessed with parents and teachers who were cartoonists; I'd assume he had someone to copy from and innovate materials out of. He had friends with mutual interest, they used to gather and draw comics for hours. And as they grew older, their ambitious curved up, and started making movies. "I made a decision that I was going to live by my wits." Groening stated.

And when he moved to Los Angeles, he drew comics for the L.A Weekly, where he begun making a name for himself, and eventually ended up working for Fox Broadcasting Company, where he created the Simpsons.

After all these strokes of luck, opportunities and hard work, is there a wonder about Groening success? A man who believed and followed his dream? I guess not.

By now I hope we can understand the origins of creativity and talent. And the fact that if we can employ them, we will be happy in abundance. There is a creative genius in all of us, we just need to keep looking. Creativity, in a nutshell, is the outcome of curiosity, hard work, and a growing thrust for knowledge.    

The Myth of Smart and Stupid

Not a long ago, I was in Jeddah. My love for this city must come from its diversified background. No one judges you or intervenes. You are free.

I was walking down the Cornish with a friend whom I consider one of the smartest people I've had the fortune to know. We shared a lot, our passion for reading, our passion for fitness, our passion for change and we both grew up in Saudi Arabia. within the first few minutes a conversation with him, you can tell he's a very passionate ,strong hearted, person.

We're discussing a topic which I forgot now, but I clearly remember how it led me to bring the topic of Noam Chomsky, who's a prominent Jewish professor at MIT. I didn't expect my friend to know who Noam Chomsky is, but I was shocked when my friend asked me about the meaning of the three letters: MIT! otherwise known as Massachusetts Institute of Technology!

At first glance I thought he was joking. But he actually didn't hear about one of the top engineering schools in the world.

I know my friend isn't stupid, but the question that aroused was:

Why a man with such intelligence and deep intellect doesn't know about MIT?

Am I exaggerating? Was I too judgmental? Yes, I was. If this incident had occurred with a total stranger, I would have judged him to be stupid! So, what was my friend?

Before we answer that, let's study more cases.

I recall having a discussion with a Saudi housewife in which she told me that she heard of a cartoon called "Hiroshima and Nagasaki" and she was very excited to watch them.

At the same time, what makes high GPA Saudi female college graduate unaware of car driving techniques, while you can cross the bridge to Al Bahrain where you can find high school female graduates driving their cars in full control.

Another situation that puzzled me. a Saudi mother showed me a video of her 7 years old daughter, named Tala, astonishingly performing a song she had written and played on an electronic guitar. Not only that, the song was inEnglish. But that wasn't the stunning part. A while ago, I taught a group of 12 to 17 years old orphans a poorly executed English course, what surprised me was the fact they couldn't spell the English alphabet.

Were the orphans stupid? Was Tala a super smart person? Do Saudi female college graduates have a slow learning curve? The girl who told me that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were good cartoons came from a privileged family.

My friend who didn't hear of MIT is a very bright young doctorate researcher, who spent the largest share of his life in the UK.

I think you're starting to see to where I'm heading with this. No? ok, allow me to dig deeper.

There's a worldwide , well known, test called the IQ test or the Intelligence Quotient test. Without going into details, this test measures the individual's intelligence and compares it to a standardized scale. For a normal human being who goes to college and graduates, his or her IQ is located between 90 to 109. For a person who's below 90, he or she is mentally challenged. On the other hand, a person with an IQ higher than 109, that person is superior.

Back to the cases I discussed. I know those people, their IQs are not superior, but at the same time they don't have challenged mentalities. They have an average IQ, their minds functioned perfectly normal if not extraordinarily at times.

So what do we conclude from the above? Individuals IQs aren't the problem. Be patient, we're zooming in on the problem. I'm just eliminating the normal excuses.

As you've seen, I went from a young doctorate researcher, to  an average housewife, to super college girls who can't drive cars,  to a talented 7 years old girl and a smart orphan teenager. A wide range of normal thinking individuals that

represent clusters of our community.

So what is the reason that made them unaware of well known facts?

I think we can see the picture now: it's the circumstances and the experience and the knowledge they have accumulated in their lives.

The doctorate researcher spent his life in UK, he got soaked so much in that life style. He just didn't happen to stumble upon the mentioning of an American university called MIT. Us Saudis, on the other hand, we tend to have a certain fascination for the American culture, but British don't! It's as simple as that.

The housewife who didn't know the horrifying truth of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, well, she didn't finish high school. She got married off too early. She was blessed with a little angel baby in the first year of her marriage. She became a devoted wonderful housewife. Something not uncommon is the Saudi culture.

  

Why Saudi female college graduates can't drive while Bahraini high school female graduates can master it easily? The answer couldn't be easier. We live in society that bans such doing and uses religion as an excuse. So Saudi girls aren't slow learners, they just weren't given the chance to practice that. And when they attempted to earn it, they were sadly rejected.

Let's revisit Tala, the super talented girl who ,at the age of 7, wrote and mastered an English song. Opposed to a 16 years orphan couldn't list the English alphabet. Unfortunately, this one is a bit complicated and depressing.

When the mother showed me the video, I took a glimpse to her eyes, they were filled with pride. She was so proud of her little daughter because she invested well in her. How did she do that?

The mother had showed me a list of books her daughter reads. And another list of activities Tala performs on weekly basis, inside and outside the school. The mother herself was an honor college graduate. She knows that education is the best weapon she can equip her daughter with, and she did it fantasticly. Tala is a true leader. I once watched her in a volunteering occasion as she read a story to a group of kids at her age, and in some cases, the kids were older. It's only natural that we can expect the best future for this young lady.

I guess now we can understand why the orphan kid couldn't spell the English alphabet. At the age of 16, he lacked a role model, the true value of morals, or a proper education. The government provides them only with materialistic needs with no concern to their emotional needs. They did a good job spoiling the morals and values of those unfortunate kids.

I remember when I first visited them for an English lesson, they were very interested in me more than the course itself. They wanted someone to look up to. Not that I'm saying I'm suitable role model, but they viewed me that way.

They need guidance. Moral lessons. Someone who can teach them the value of intellect, respect, and honesty.

It's true, they do have fancy plasma screens and they ware Nike shoes. But what of good is that if their IQ keeps declining due to the lack of healthy mental nurturing?

So let me go back to topic:The Myth of Smart and Stupid.

Most people relate those two terms with one's IQ. The truth is it's completely untrue. IQ measure one's intelligence, something that comes in the genes, and we've little control over that. We can improve upon it by healthy mental practices. IQ is objective. You can pinpoint it on a scale.

Smartness and stupidity are not objective, they are subjective. They are opinions that differ from one individual to another. What some might view as smart, we might consider it stupid and maybe wrong. why? Because we expected them to know! It's not fair.

The accumulative knowledge and experience we have, the society, family and friends we surrounded ourselves with are the basis of how most of us form opinions about life. We became too judgmental. If something doesn't fit our point of view, it becomes wrong.

We have seen how people chances were taken away from them, sometimes it was out of their control like the orphans and Saudi female college graduates. And  sometime it happens due cultural heritage like the Saudi housewives who chose devote for their husbands. Please don't think I'm criticizing them, I'm just discussing real life cases.

Do I have an Ultimate Solution? I would hope so! I think being open-minded here counts for a lot. Don't close your options to your surroundings. If you come across a comment that might seemed stupid to you, don't jump to conclusions. Try to ask that individual why he or she put it that way. No one likes to be called stupid!

Another solution is being curious, inquisitive, imaginative, and try develop your own sense of art and literature. When you see a kid using your note as a coloring pad, don't punish them, rather, embrace them. Buy them more coloring pads. Don't make them fear their intelligence. Nurture it. Help the kid find their areas of creativity and passion. And improve upon it. This could be the greatest gift one could give to kids.

Finally I would like to recommend that we should all thrive for intellect. We shouldn't accept matters at face value, we need to test them, examine them and question them. We shouldn't become slave to our cultural legacy and inherited principles. We need to create our own standards, definitions and values.

I hope my words make sense to you. If not, please argue them! question me! over-smart me!

I welcome that with an open heart!