Innovation, Creativity, and Discovery in Modern Organizations

Bundy shows how the evolution of knowledge can take us to unimaginably higher levels of human achievement, and offers a new model for the understanding and implementation of creativity and discovery. He provides guidelines that will vitalize technical thinking, useful insights into the creative process that will benefit all who are concerned with growth and innovation, and shows how unconventionality when reduced to rationalism offers a pathway to successful innovation. Building upon the work of the physicist Hermann Helmholtz and the concept of consilience proposed by sociobiologist E. W. Wilson, Bundy provides flexible, algorithmic formulas that encourage deviation from conventional thinking and the development of creative intuition. With the global economy expanding so rapidly and with the deplorable rise in the use of technology to create man-made disasters, Bundy shows how essential it is for leaders in industry, government, and politics to understand how innovation occurs, and how to generate and control creativity for the benefit of all of us, that is, for the discovery of new products and services and their successful, responsible commercialization. Written for laymen as well as specialists in fields other than science, Bundy's book is a fascinating, needed look into how things come to be what they are and how to bring about new things that will advance civilization and help the world to prosper.

Bundy's book may be seen as a consilient attempt to encourage the interaction of diverse disciplines, toward the goal of understanding them better and enhancing the quality and quantity of their outputs. Bundy builds a model for creativity and discovery, one that provides a framework for investigating the depth of human thought and how it leads to great achievement. He examines knowledge gain, preparation, incubation, stimulation, conventional and unconventional thinking, illumination, and commercialization—all of them pathways to discovery. Out of this comes an informal algorithm—a useful beginning, he calls it, but not a final answer. Equally important is intense collaborative research and the interaction with others engaged in the same quest. Even irrational thought can lead to innovation and discovery, and he shows how in fascinating detail. But he is careful to point out that the hidden variables in many discoveries. These irrational paths, become productive only after they are examined and reduced to scientific thought. The result is a readable but no less rigorous look at the process of innovation within organizations and how it can be encouraged to become pervasive.