DURING the twentieth century, the world watched as the United States churned out innovation after innovation. Now, however, the tables are turning. Many other countries are placing innovation at the top of their national agendas. From Singapore to Finland, from Chile to China, countries around the world are designing novel approaches to innovation strategy. They are creating forward-looking education and talent-development policies, pouring money into large-scale initiatives, and snapping up new assets in the form of intellectual capital and infrastructure. (John Kao, Harvard Business Review, March 2009)

In 1981, as a technology enthusiast, I could hardly wait to devour the Soul of a New Machine, Tracy Kidder’s best-selling non-fiction book about a group of engineers creating the DEC’s Eclipse, a next generation super-minicomputer, but I was sorely disappointed when I realised there were no black engineers among the team embarking on a hold-on-to-the-edge-of-your-seat adventure.

It was clear those days that microchips were emerging as the embodiment for economic growth for countries paying attention. Today, the trumpet is sounding: Creative economy — the newest economic miracle cure for the Caribbean; an abracadabra of purring engines, ready to drive productivity from red to gold.

Creativity is not an overnight whim of the Midas touch, but a whispering call to the attentive ear. Is the call too late?

Marcus Aurelius was one of Rome’s few enlightened emperors (and one of Marcus Garvey’s favourite philosophers). In the movie Gladiator, Richard Harris played the fictional character of Aurelius, who explained Rome this way: “There was once a dream that was Rome. You could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish… it was so fragile… Well, Rome is no more.”

Puff! A thought slips into 10- year-old John’s mind to build a transporter so he can teleport himself from Jamaica to Brixton to visit his uncle. “Wow, no plane fare,” John muses. His imaginative engine fires up and brightens his eyes. He breaks the news to Norman, his best friend, and shares the magazine article that started it all. The two boys rush to the library. John is not put off when he learns that the billions and billions of atoms and tens of trillions of cells that make up his body would have to be disassembled, in the state-of-the-art Bio-dematerialser pod he plans to build at his parents’ house in Kingston. His body would then be reassembled inside a similar unit he plans to have his 14-year-old cousin build in the basement of his uncle’s house in Brixton. John pictures himself stepping out of the transporter into his uncle’s basement in time for dinner in three months.

However, that afternoon, Mr Downbowy, his science teacher, advises him: “It’s an old idea, John, it can’t be done. Find better things to occupy your time.” John walked home, gazing at the ground. He didn’t even care about the pink stain of cherry malt spilled upon his blue and white school tie during lunch at Fruity Beef’s restaurant.

“Yuh tink ‘im smokin’ ganja an’… ” his father asked his mother in their bedroom that night. “One ting, he wouldn’t need to go thru immigration,” his mother responds amusingly.

John’s heart sinks into his belly as he pulls the sheet over his head and drifts off to sleep. Mr Downbowy and John’s parents’ words have killed his dream.

John’s story is fiction, but underlines the awesome imaginative power and vulnerability of the creative mind; a generator of extraordinary innovative ideas.

Therefore a method, pinpointing students with creative aptitudes should be set up, along with creative thinking clubs, where individuals, motivated by wacky ideas like John’s, will be elevated instead of crushed. Creative clubs are places where individuals are comfortable musing whether a leaf is tumbling — stipule over apex, through the air, against the background of blue sky, is a metaphor for someone liberating himself from the pack, charting a path to his destiny, or simply a falling leaf.

But creative minds are not like most. That’s why America’s successful hi-tech companies spend millions pampering their intellectual assets. Google’s campus, for instance, has all the amenities of a five-star resort for its employees.

Indeed, nourishing creative minds is not new. After one of Warner Von Braun’s rocket engineers took responsibility for a terrible mistake that caused a rocket to dangerously go astray, instead of punishing him, he gave him a bottle of champagne as encouragement not to make the same mistake again.

Von Braun’s rockets blew up time after time at Raketenflugplatz (port of rocket) and later at Peenemunde, but the rocket chief never gave up until success on October 3, 1942. It was his early efforts that gave Apollo 11 its wings to land on the moon July 1969, within the timeline President Kennedy had asked his countrymen, and only days ago the Philae lander touched down on a comet hundreds of millions of miles away. Yes, true; the original rocket project was to rain down destruction, but these days European Space Agency celebrates the Rosetta project’s success. It’s the same as the Manhattan project precipitating the destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, but today, atomic energy is the primary source of electricity for France — a testament that creativity can be gateways to good and evil.

Creativity must honour the better angel of our nature, reinventing ourselves, breaking axiomatic shackles that anchor us to Brother Anancy’s style of survivalism. Marley’s soulful rhythm of his lyrical small axe chopping down stalwarts of corruption and injustice, propelling the same universal righteousness as the second movement of Beethoven’s fifth piano concerto’s tranquil violin peel’s effort at creating peace.

Jamaica must continue clearing the air of violence if it seriously intends to attract and cultivate knowledge capital, which it can, because of its natural pool of cutting-edge thinkers. Just check out its cultural influence worldwide. However, like Singapore, Finland, Chile, and China, the island must begin identifying, developing, and protecting its intellectual assets through Government and private initiatives. That would be a prelude to cultivating creative minds, leading to a strong knowledge-based economy.

Creativity flourishes when we have a sense of safety and self-acceptance… — Julia Cameron

jeffery.wright@live.ca