Every day we hear about some fascinating new discovery. Yet anemic progress toward addressing the greatest risks to humankind -- clean energy, emerging infections, and cancer -- warns us that science may not be meeting its potential. Indeed, there is evidence that advances are slowing. Science is costly and can hurt people; thus it must be pursued with caution. Yet, excessive caution stifles the very thing that powers inventiveness: creation. In her boldest book yet, Roberta Ness argues that the system of funding agencies, universities, and industries designed to promote innovation has come to impede it.
The Creativity Crisis strips away the scientific enterprise's veil of mystique to reveal the gritty underbelly of university research. America's economic belt-tightening discourages long-term, risky investments in revolutionary advances and elevates short-term projects with assured outcomes. The pursuit of basic research insights, with the greatest power to transform but little ability to enrich, is being abandoned. The social nature of academia today also contributes to the descent of revolutionary discovery. In academia, which tends to be insular, hierarchical, and tradition-bound, research ideas are "owned" and the owners gain enormous clout to decide what is accepted. Communalism is antithetical to idea ownership. Thus science has not embraced the Web-based democratic sharing of ideas called crowdsourcing, one of the greatest tools for creativity and social change in our age. A final battleground between creation and caution is within the sphere of ethics. Scientists are typically altruistic but sometimes have all-too-human inclinations toward avarice and conceit. The most original thinkers are most likely to flout convention. This tendency can pull them across the lines of acceptable behavior. Caution is a necessary check on the destructive potential of amoral creation. Yet, when every individual and institution is considered a priori to be a threat, adventuresome invention is squelched.
Creation and caution in science should be in balance, but they are not. For possibilities to unlock, the ecosystem in which science is done must be fundamentally rebalanced.

Genius. It is a word that invokes mystique. How did Einstein deduce the theory of special relativity? How did Rutherford intuit the inner secrets of the atom? Although (in hindsight) genius can appear to have been predictable, more often such thinking was inscrutable - like a bolt of insight arising from nowhere. Perhaps the minds of geniuses, prepared through the providence of genetics, were simply lucked upon by chance. Or perhaps their visionary insights were attained through divine intervention. But could there be an entirely different explanation? Could there be a more knowable process underlying genius? Genius Unmasked reveals the nature of genius. Roberta Ness asks, "Is breathtaking creativity really so magical? Or are there, instead, consistent maps that iconic scientists used to discover their imaginative ideas?" What this entertaining book demonstrates is that genius is achieved through a thinking process that is less mystical than it is systematic. Even the greatest of innovative minds used a cognitive tool box that can be opened and understood. Genius Unmasked is an adventure through the lives and minds of more than a dozen genius scientists. It unveils the formula behind their radical thinking. But this is not just a book of stories. Through explanation of innovation tools and their impressive demonstration, it will help you to learn for yourself how to become a better innovator. In the end, Genius Unmasked is a "how to" book for advancing your own personal creativity.