Dan Gilbert’s creative process involves a lot of puzzling and puzzling and puzzling.

Topic: Dan Gilbert's creative process involves a lot of puzzling and puzzling and puzzling.

Transcript: I think my creative process is probably as mundane as most of them are. You know, we … we … I think we glamorize creativity. We imagine that somebody is sleeping and wakes up and says, “Eureka!” Most of the time, creative solutions are a product of time untasked. It’s a lot of people spending a lot of time puzzling and puzzling and puzzling together. I think the best ideas I’ve ever had are a result of banging my head together with my collaborator, Tim Wilson, or my graduate students for months on end, and finally arriving at a … what looks like a creative solution from the outside, but for us seems like a pretty hard one and natural progression from ignorance and knowledge.

Recorded on: 6/12/2007