Creativity fosters critical thinking and the ability to make significant contributions both close to home and beyond borders. As David Castro observes in Genership, “At the heart of human nature is the capacity to imagine and invent the world." Silicon Valley is a prime example.
The more people harness their individual creative power, the greater the achievements of the collective. Imagine a world where the majority, instead of the minority, operated at their full potential tapping into their unique core competencies. Focused creativity increases our capacity to birth new paradigms. Everyone benefits from the energy generated in highly creative centers such as Silicon Valley, where entrepreneurship is an integral part of the culture and everyone has an idea for a start-up. It is the expected norm. It is also one of the most productive and prosperous regions in the world: a center of innovation, creativity and imagination.
Silicon Valley thrives on constant reinvention and reinterpretation. It does not stay stuck on past concepts and identities. It has a great capacity to be with the present, and this factor is a major contributor to the genius of the place.
The Valley is very much about the now without being dismissive of history.The past is recognized as something to be learned from but neither does it dictate the future, which makes it a highly creative hot spot. The less we hold onto the past, the more inventive and productive we become. Beholden to the past creates hardness and inflexibility. It also often creates a misplaced nostalgia, or worse, regret. When we create fixed ideas about how things should be, they limit our ability to invent and problem solve; the more flexible we are in our thinking the more possibilities open up. It creates room for genius because we become fully present in what is instead of what was, which makes a significant difference in the quality of our thinking process. It is only in the present that we become capable of creating on a profound level. For that is the place from which inspiration arises. It is where genius resides.
Places with concentrated pockets of highly successful people generate power centers.
In such environments, people cluster together, creating a self-reinforcing model that can be copied and replicated to achieve certain results. Such places embrace innovation, ingenuity and independence with a healthy respect and understanding of collaborative power. Start-ups can be places of hyper-focused creativity, which is what makes them such powerful incubators for new ideas.
One constant in any place where high levels of achievement exist is that they are creative centers. Silicon Valley is the technology capital; Los Angeles is the entertainment capital; New York is both, perhaps ironically, the finance and art capital. Yes, even finance at its highest level is quite creative. All three of these places are very much about the now. They focus on what is happening today, not yesterday. They embrace creativity in its various manifestations.
Silicon Valley's profound impact on the world demonstrates the effectiveness of a model where there is lots of flexibility coupled with the belief that one can always go further to break through a perceived limit.
It's a world of entrepreneurs. These powerful creative forces transform society. It is not a world based on “either or,” but instead on “both and.” It is about seeing the possibility in complexity and contradiction. There is an acceptance of ambiguity until an answer arises. It is a culture that embraces creativity at its very core. It marks individuals recognizing their own capacity to be innovators and originators. Fundamentally, the capacity to do so is available to every person.
*The term "Learning from" is derived from the work of architects Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi who jointly authored the book Learning from Las Vegas.
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