April 26, 2007
Books: Creative minds at work— business, science and the arts
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That modern Jewish influence comes through even in the book cover. While the front flap features thick blocks of blue and green in a dark-blue background, reflecting the inner serenity of a creative mind, the spine has an orange stripe running from top to bottom.Feinstein chose the color orange because he says that in certain left-wing Jewish circles the color and the fruit of the same name are viewed as symbols of creativity.
If one can not quibble about Feinstein's selection of artists, he might have written a bit more about the role of memory and its commingling with imagination, a subject he broaches briefly in a discussion of the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Feinstein also might have addressed the controversial theories of biologist Rupert Sheldrake, who suggests that organisms of a similar species or morphology, including homo sapiens, convey information to one another through an invisible cellular communication, a hypothesis that calls into question whether there is such a thing as originality.
These criticisms aside, Feinstein has done yeoman work here and should be applauded for bringing the study of creativity, long the preserve of humanities students, into a business school setting. It is comforting to think that some of today's MBAs are not only getting a taste of Virginia Woolf and Einstein but that they themselves may go on to creative breakthroughs that will enrich society.
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