It was beautiful today at Arrowhead Stadium, the home of the Kansas City Chiefs football team - a crisp, sunny day with a smattering of clouds in a clear blue sky.  It was also a memorable day of football, with a long touchdown pass from Matt Cassel to Dwayne Bowe by way of a flea-flicker out of the wildcat formation.  As a fan of creativity, I have a special appreciation for whoever thought up that spectacular play.  There was also a one-handed touchdown catch by rookie tight end Tony Moeaki, which was wonderful for the sheer athleticism of it.  Even so, what I remember most from my visit to the stadium today was realizing that Chiefs founder Lamar Hunt was a creative. 

As background, we went early to the game to visit the new Hall of Honor, which told the story not only of the creation of the team, but also the creation of the American Football League which eventually merged with its rival to form the modern National Football League.  Passing through the hall, I noticed an old child’s rubber “Super Ball” in a case of items relating to the merger.  Apparently, Lamar got the idea to name the NFL championship game the “Super Bowl” from watching his kids play with the toy.   When we passed by the case that described the founding of the AFL, I was surprised to learn that Lamar had gotten the idea to create the new league while on a long plane flight after an unsuccessful trip to buy an existing football team.  He was so excited about the idea that he asked for a box of airline stationary so that he could write down his thoughts right then and there.  For me, these stories demonstrate two really important factors in creativity and ideation, that is new and unusual experiences intermixed with periods of solitude.

Let’s discuss the solitude part first.  Many people believe that the best way to get new ideas is to get your creatives together for a “brainstorming session.”  While that is one effective tool in the toolbox of ideation, I believe solitude is a more powerful and less appreciated engine of creativity.  Perhaps that is because most of my best ideas come to me when I am alone.  Others may need the back and forth of a group discussion to bring their ideas to the surface, but for me they come up in quiet moments, and I am in good company in this belief.  The composer Wolfgang Mozart summarized this idea well when he said, “When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone, and of good cheer - say, traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep; it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly.”  With this in mind, perhaps it is not surprising that the idea to form the AFL came to Lamar Hunt in an airplane sitting alone with his thoughts.  

According to an article by Ann Hulbert titled “The Prodigy Puzzle” published in the New York Times, when gifted people such as Davidson Fellows are studied, “What stands out in their childhoods is an animus toward school, a tolerance for solitude, and families with lots of books.”  I believe that comfort with solitude is vital for the creative process.  For those who want to be more creative but feel uncomfortable being alone, this video essay by Tanya Davis is helpful and interesting. 

I think Mozart would have understood well when Tanya says, “If you are happy in your head then solitude is blessed.”

Now I would like to turn to a discussion of how unusual experiences stimulate the creative process.  In her article, Ann Hulbert also notes that when studying gifted people, “What also stands out is families with “wobble” - which means stress and, often, risk-taking parents with strong opinions - rather than bastions of supportiveness where a child's giftedness is ever in self-conscious focus.”  According to Wikipedia, Lamar Hunt’s father, HL Hunt, was the youngest of eight children, had a reputation as a gambler, had six children with his first wife, four children with his second wife, and four more children with his mistress and then third wife.  He made a fortune in the oil business, becoming one of the eight richest people in the United States.  Additionally, during the 1960 presidential campaign, Hunt’s “Facts Forum” was an aggressive critic of John F. Kennedy.  Sure sounds like a wobbly family with an opinionated, risk-taking parent to me.

Hulbert concludes her article with the thoughts of Dean Keith Simonton, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis, who specializes in the scientific study of historical genius.  Hulbert, quoting Simonton at times, notes “that creativity and innovation depend on “exposure to the unusual, to the diverse, to heterogeneity,” which inspires a “recognition that there are a lot of different ways of looking at different things.” There are also all kinds of ways that this “awareness that there's more than one possible world” can dawn.  The fact that it is built into the immigrant experience is one reason, on top of an ethos of incredibly hard work, that Simonton says he believes kids of recently arrived families so often dominate the ranks of the spectacularly talented.”