Powering the great ongoing changes of our time is the rise of human creativity as the defi

ning feature of economic life. Creativity has come to be valued, because new technologies, new industries and new wealth flow from it. And as a result, our lives and society have begun to echo with creative ideas. It is our commitment to creativity in its varied dimensions that forms the underlying spirit of our age.

Creativity is essential to the way we live and work today, and in many senses always has been. The big advances in standard of living—not to mention the big competitive advantages in the marketplace—always have come from "better recipes, not just more cooking." One might argue that's not strictly true. One might point out, for instance, that during the long period from the early days on the Industrial Revolution to modern times, much of the growth in productivity and material wealth in the industrial nations came not just from creative inventions like the steam engine, but from the widespread application of "cooking in quantity" business methods like massive division of labor, concentration of assets, vertical integration and economies of scale. But those methods themselves were creative developments.