Steven Johnson

But psychologists have long been in on the joke that humans free-associate in absurdly predictable ways. Take a hundred Americans off the street and ask them to free-associate on the word “green” and forty of them will say “grass.” Another forty will offer up another color—“red” or “yellow” or “blue”—or the word “color” itself. The more creative associations only emerge when you get to the bottom 20 percent of responses, the long tail of free association, where words like “Ireland,” or “money,” or “leaves” appear. Ask them to free-associate on the word “blue” and you’ll see the same pattern: 80 percent will suggest either another color or the word “sky,” and the last 20 percent of associations will be scattered across dozens of less predictable responses: “jeans,” “lake,” or “lonely.”

Individuals who are unusually creative tend to generate more original associations when tested.

Her research suggests a paradoxical truth about innovation: good ideas are more likely to emerge in environments that contain a certain amount of noise and error.