The ability to generate “effective surprise.” That’s what Jerome Bruner, the wise and distinguished psychologist, described as the hallmark of a creative enterprise. Effective surprise “need not be rare or infrequent or bizarre and is often none of these things.” Instead, it has “the quality of obviousness” about it, “producing a shock of recognition following which there is no longer astonishment.”
A version of this article appeared in the March 2001 issue of Harvard Business Review.
