Left brain, Right brain … How to be a Genius!
March 12, 2018 at KFAS, Kuwait City
How can you be a genius?
Peter Fisk explores how to think more creatively by more effectively connecting your intelligence (left brain, analytical, logical, incremental thinking) with your imagination (right brain, intuitive, conceptual, borderless thinking).
Inspired by Einstein and Picasso, we look at how “geniuses” combine the thinking, using the power of hypothesis-based methodology. Genius is the ability to do both. It combines data and ideas, backwards and forwards, big and small.
Free gift: The Little Book of Genius
Peter Fisk is the author of 4 books on “genius” thinking. In an interview with one of the world’s leading business journal, he explains how he got started in business, and where his genius thinking originated:
I started with a passion to understand the world. At school I loved sciences, the path of discovery, making sense, and exploring possibilities. I went on to study nuclear physics, the potential of the invisible world, and harnessing the smallest particles to innovate everything from nanotech healthcare to superfast travel.
But I wanted to progress faster. So I joined the world’s largest airline, entering the much more creative and human world of marketing, and by 28 years old I had my dream job – managing the supersonic Concorde brand. I went on to work with all types of companies, with innovative brands and in markets all around the world.
Years later, when I wrote my first book, I wanted to find something personal to write about. When I started in business, people always gave me the analytical jobs because of my scientific background. But I loved people and the excitement of creativity much more. Then I realised the best people can do both – they have a left and right brain – they can be Einstein and Picasso at the same time.
I called it “genius” – to be creative and analytical, to be local and global, the yin and the yang, to create the future whilst also delivering today. My first book “Marketing Genius” was translated into 35 languages, and about how Einstein and Picasso would do business today. Since then I’ve written 7 books, most recently “Gamechangers”, about how you can think bigger and different, and have the potential to change your world.
Let’s start with the dictionary
genius ˈdʒiːnɪəs
noun
1. exceptional intellectual or creative power or other natural ability.
“she was a teacher of genius”
synonyms: brilliance, great intelligence, great intellect, great ability, cleverness, brains, erudition, wisdom, sagacity, fine mind, wit, artistry, flair, creative power, precocity, precociousness.
2. an exceptionally intelligent person or one with exceptional skill in a particular area of activity.
“a mathematical genius”
synonyms: brilliant person, mental giant, mastermind, Einstein, intellectual, intellect, brain, highbrow, expert, master, artist, polymath.
A recent article in the LA Times:
Sometimes we think of the genius as someone extremely knowledgeable, but that definition also falls short. During Albert Einstein’s time, other scientists knew more physics than Einstein did, but history doesn’t remember them. That’s because they didn’t deploy that knowledge the way Einstein did. They weren’t able to, as he put it, “regard old questions from a new angle.”
The genius is not a know-it-all but a see-it-all, someone who, working with the material available to all of us, is able to make surprising and useful connections. True genius involves not merely an incremental advance, but a conceptual leap. As philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer put it: Talent hits the target no one else can hit; genius hits the target no one else can see.
We’ve lost sight of this truth, and too often bestow the title of genius on talented people hitting visible targets. A good example is the much-ballyhooed announcement earlier this year that scientists had, for the first time, recorded the sound of two black holes colliding, a billion light-years away. It was a remarkable discovery, no doubt, but it did not represent a seismic shift in how we understand the universe; it merely confirmed Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
As Plato observed, “What is honored in a country is cultivated there.” What do we honor? Digital technology, and the convenience it represents, so naturally we get a Steve Jobs or a Mark Zuckerberg as our “geniuses,” which, in point of fact, they aren’t.
Don’t get me wrong: the iPhone and Facebook are wondrous inventions. In many (though certainly not all) ways, they make our lives a bit easier, a bit more convenient. If anything, though, a true genius makes our lives more difficult, more unsettled. William Shakespeare’s words provide more disquiet than succor, and the world felt a bit more secure before Charles Darwin came along. Zuckerberg and Jobs may have changed our world, but they haven’t yet changed our worldview.
What about the Nobel Arthur Prizes awarded each year? Surely they are a mark of genius. Not so fast, says Dean Simonton, a psychologist at UC Davis. writing in the journal Nature: “Just as athletes can win an Olympic gold medal by beating the world record only by a fraction of a second, scientists can continue to receive Nobel Prizes for improving the explanatory breadth of theories or the preciseness of measurements.”
National Geographical ran a great series exploring the meaning of genius:
James Gleich is a great thinker, here considering the traits of genius:
Scientists explored the concept of beautiful minds at the World Science Festival.
And finally, are you more intelligent than you realise?
Find out more and book >