The majority of people only experience a generative idea through the concrete ideas it generates. The generative idea is too abstract and insubstantial to perceive as real and actual; the mind can’t wrap itself around it, like it can a generated idea. However in every generated idea the generative idea to which it belongs resonates and makes a person respond emotionally.

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Innovation gurus make loads of money promising executives and managers that anyone can innovate. They may be right, but if they are, they always neglect to mention that anyone who does wish to learn to innovate deeply will have to undergo an intellectual metamorphosis most will be unwilling to accept.

That metamorphosis involves learning to orient oneself to generative ideas as well as the more familiar generated thought we celebrate as objective fact. It involves rethinking what subjectivity essentially is, and recognizing that objectivity does not, for a finite human mind, contain it.