How to Fly a Horse: The Secret History of Creation, Invention, and Discovery

In every case, the pattern is the same: begin with something familiar, evaluate it, solve any problems, and repeat until a satisfactory solution is found.

Thinking is finding a way to achieve a goal that cannot be attained by an obvious action.

Minds do not leap. Observation, evaluation, and iteration, not sudden shifts of perception, solve problems and lead us to creation.

Creation is a result—a place thinking may lead us. Before we can know how to create, we must know how to think.

Evaluation directs iteration.

Creating is taking steps, not making leaps: find a problem, solve it, and repeat. Most steps wins. The best artists, scientists, engineers, inventors, entrepreneurs, and other creators are the ones who keep taking steps by finding new problems, new solutions, and then new problems again. The root of innovation is exactly the same as it was when our

Work is the soul of creation. Work is getting up early and going home late, turning down dates and giving up weekends, writing and rewriting, reviewing and revising, rote and routine, staring down the doubt of the blank page, beginning when we do not know where to start, and not stopping when we cannot go on. It is not fun, romantic, or, most of th

normal thinking is rich and complex—so rich and complex that it can sometimes yield extraordinary—or “creative”—results. We do not need other processes.

“Creative thinking is simply a special kind of problem-solving behavior.”