HoustonChronicle.com - We can open mind to creativity, experts say

[9 March 2005 - Houston Chronicle] Creativity is all around us -- from the technology that makes it possible to carry our favorite tunes in something the size of a pack of gum to the vision that drew more than 4 million people to see saffron-colored gates across 23 miles of New York City's Central Park. Without creativity, Apple's iPod would be nothing more than a microprocessor with memory, not the digital device that has transformed the way we experience listening to music. And Christo and Jean-Claude's The Gates would be nothing more than fabric and steel. No wonder researchers are studying creativity, academics and business people are teaching courses on it and authors are writing books about it. ... "Much of the standard of living is the result of inventiveness, the act of creativity in developing new things, new devices, new ways to live," says Merton Flemings, an engineering professor at MIT in Boston, where he heads an annual contest for aspiring inventors that includes a single $500,000 prize. More