The Most Creative Man in Silicon Valley

The teacher who imparted these valuable lessons -- and who inspires such affectionate praise-is an affable, gray-haired 61-year-old with a tendency to poke fun at his own verbosity. Michael Ray may have a soft spot for all things New Agey and Californian, but he also has a formidable resume: Trained in social psychology at Northwestern University, Ray is Stanford's first John G. McCoy-Banc One Corp. Professor of Creativity and Innovation, and of Marketing. He is also author or coauthor of nine books, among them Creativity in Business (Doubleday, 1986) and The Path of the Everyday Hero (Penguin Putnam, 1991). Since 1996, he has been a consultant to a slew of high-profile companies, including Charles Schwab, Clorox, and Hewlett-Packard. (See "The Business of Creativity") In 1997, Ray developed software based on his famous course that allows businesspeople -- who rarely have as much time as students do -- to take a virtual version of the course, supplemented by workshops and frequent live coaching sessions. He plans to wind down his full-time teaching role at Stanford in order to concentrate on these beyond-the-classroom endeavors.

For Ray, creativity is not an every-now-and-again exercise -- the search for one great eureka moment. Nor is it about coming up with an incredible idea-the next billion-dollar innovation. For Ray, creativity is a way of life. Forget cookie-cutter brainstorming techniques or tips for better meetings. Underlying Ray's course is a search for answers to two fundamental questions: "Who is my self?" and "What is my work?" You can't know what and how you want to create, he argues, until you know who you are and what you hope to do with your life.

"In order to deal with the chaos that exists in the world today," says Ray, "you need some grounding. That grounding best comes from knowing who you are in a rich sense, so that as things change, you know what your resources are and what you can bring to a situation. That way, you don't have to worry, 'Am I capable of doing this?' You already know the answer.

"The creativity that I'm talking about is different from problem solving," he continues. "It's different from just coming up with ideas. People have enough ideas. The real question is 'Which ideas are you going to use?' You have to look for a different resource. I always go back to the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, who said that you can't step in the same stream twice. People say that the only constant in the world today is change. What I'm saying is, that's not really true. There's another constant in the world: your own internal creativity. That's always there for you."

The Origin of (Creative) Species

Michael Ray has come up with dozens of ways in which ambitious people can address the tough questions that are at the heart of the creative process. He's been asking those questions of himself for decades.

Ray attended Northwestern University, where he earned four degrees. His final degree was a doctorate in social psychology -- which Ray describes as the study of how people bring their inner psychology into the outside world. Along with his academic pursuits, Ray worked at Foote, Cone & Belding, an advertising agency in Chicago, which prompted the head of the advertising department at Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism to offer him a teaching position. While teaching an advertising course to Northwestern undergraduates, Ray stumbled onto a way of discussing creativity that would change his life-and that would change the lives of many of his students.

"I had this idea that I would give a little lecture on the creative process," says Ray. "Somehow, I decided that I would ask students how they came up with ideas. I said, 'Think of a time when you had a great idea.' This one guy, a sophomore, said, 'I had an idea recently. I was taking a course in real estate, which I was really interested in because I thought that it would be a good way to make some money. But it was the dullest course that I'd ever taken. At the same time, I had a new girlfriend, and I was looking for things that we could do together. I had to study for an exam in the real-estate course, and I decided to make my study session into a game to make it more exciting. I asked my girlfriend to help me with the game, which I modeled after Monopoly, because I knew that she liked to play games.'"

As Ray listened to the student's story, an idea formed in his head. "I wish I could remember that guy's name, because he made this thing work," Ray says. "That class was maybe 70 minutes long, and I'd been thinking beforehand that if my creativity lecture wasn't a success, then I would let my students go early. Instead, I was able to start a discussion based on that guy's story and all of the lessons that were embedded in it, because it had so many of the characteristics of how the creative process works. He came up with an idea during a fit of real frustration. He blended things from two different areas, displaying an ability to see unexpected likenesses. He dealt with his problem in a new way."