Angus presents his groundbreaking framework for teaching and cultivating creativity.
Professor of story sciences Angus Fletcher asks the question: Why, when we’re teaching creativity, do students get less creative? Our current framework for understanding creativity is taken from early computer science, and it is based upon pattern recognition— the same concepts that power AI. However, Angus argues that patterns are not what help us to be more creative. Instead, his research shows that human creativity comes through story and recognizing exceptional information. In this talk, Angus’ describes his innovative research, which was published in The Journal of Creativity, has been featured by the Harvard Business Review, and for which he was awarded a medal by the U.S. Army for the first new model of creativity since the 1950s. He inspires the audience to use the concepts he’s discovered to solve problems in their own lives.
About the speaker
Angus Fletcher is Professor of Story Science at Ohio State's Project Narrative, the world's leading academic institute for the study of story. His research has been called "life-changing" by Brene Brown and "mind-blowing" by Malcolm Gladwell. He has published dozens of peer-reviewed articles on creativity in journals from Harvard Business Review to the New York Academy of Sciences. His most recent books are Storythinking (Columbia University Press, 2024) and Primal Intelligence (Penguin Random House, 2025). In 2023, he was award the Commendation Medal for "groundbreaking research" with US Army Special Operations.
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