Transcript for Tom Cech Interview - How do you become creative?

How do you become creative?

That is a good question, but not an easy one to answer.

Again, I think there is a combination of Nature and nurture.

I don’t think there is a single gene for creativity, but probably some combination of genes that...

...affect how the brain is wired and I think that most people, even the highly created people,

they are not always creative.

I mean you try to be creative all the time, but much of your work in science is rather routine.

You’re designing experiments, you’re collecting data and you’re interpreting the data.

But maybe creativity in part comes from a willingness to look at things in an odd way,

to propose explanations that are off to the side of what other people would do.

And then yet not to believe these crazy explanations, but to demand of yourself...

...very high level of proof before you’re willing to accept an explanation for your observations.

Hard question to answer.

I once was at a meeting they called “Creativity in the arts and sciences” and...

...there were scientists and then there were various kinds of artists, including...

...painters, musicians and sculptors and...

...we started out thinking that creativity in the arts and sciences must be very different...

...and as each of us would talk about how different our creative process was from the...

...artistic process, the artist would say: no, that’s exactly how we think of creativity.

So it seems to be a human potential that can be played out in very different ways,

even in the arts and the sciences.