Creativity and Entrepreneurship: Changing Currents in Education and Public Life edited by Lynn Book and David P. Phillips

Abstract

Creativity and Entrepreneurship is an enthusiastically interdisciplinary anthology, with 14 short essays presenting ‘insightful education and policy recommendations’ linking theory with practice, and academia with private sector entrepreneurship. Contributors represent a variety of backgrounds—specialties run from neurology to business to drama—but the emphasis is less on analyzing how and why creativity works, and more on exploring ways it can be encouraged. As such, the academic authors included represent the humanities rather more than the sciences. I found it to be a good, if frustrating book. The goals of the volume are laudable, and I suspect most readers will find several essays of interest, but as a whole it lacks coherence. Perhaps this is somewhat inevitable: it would be an unusual reader indeed who was equally interested in, say, the metaphorical significance of core samples (LaMoreaux’s essay) as creativity training seminars (the essay by Roark et al.). The sheer range of perspectives brought to bear is itself intriguing.