But Handler was not remotely creative. She made a useful mistake. Her story has nothing to do with the imagination or creativity, at least as properly understood, or even as previously described by Lehrer. I suppose it is intended to prove that outsiders can cause breakthroughs; but if outsider intuition is to be defined as any random notion based on error or coincidence—as anything that anybody might say—then the notion is too loose to ground a theory of discovery. Finding yourself sick for a weekend can lead to the discovery of a good television program. All of this really has nothing to do with Bob Dylan writing lyrics or a chemist solving a physics problem. The chemist, in Lehrer’s scenario, was presumably approaching the problem from a new or interesting entry point; but even though he was not trained in physics, he was trained in scientific reasoning and procedure, and was therefore not quite the pure outsider that Lehrer reveres. As for Handler, she was just confused.

Lehrer does not see creativity or imagination as being intricately connected to art, or to science, or to anything that we would generally term “imaginative.” It is all about success. Dylan writes successful song lyrics, and Barbie dolls sell. A Nike executive is reminded of Gary Gilmore’s famous alleged last words, and is thus able to coin the slogan “Just Do It.” Lehrer’s unwillingness to distinguish between these types of thinking, between art, science, and commerce, is discouraging. Inside or outside, the only place that finally interests Lehrer is the marketplace.

Thus, he discusses the creative culture at Pixar in an attempt to explain why the company has been so successful. His explanation—that it hires employees from diverse backgrounds and allows them to freely interact with one another—seems plausible enough. What’s more, Pixar is physically designed to encourage interactions between employees. “It is the exchanges we don’t expect, with the people we just met, that will change the way we think about everything.” But the problem of differentiating between artistic distinction and commercial distinction is especially problematic here. You can certainly argue that Pixar’s success has been both. But when Pixar workers generate new ideas, are they doing so for artistic or commercial reasons, or a combination of the two? Are these interactions helping Pixar make better movies, or more money, or both? If the films were just as good but sold fewer tickets, would Lehrer still admire them as he does? Of course there can be some overlap in the answers to these questions, and certainly creativity may be involved in an effort to make money. (Remember credit default swaps?) But if you are trying to explain the most ambitious and the most admirable exertions of human imagination and intelligence, some disaggregation, some discrimination, is necessary.

THE SECOND HALF of Lehrer’s book is even more perfunctory. He makes an intuitively convincing case that group discussions are most effective when they involve criticism, allowing group members to more fully engage with different arguments. (Though there are studies—see, anybody can play this game!—that show that this scenario leads to polarization and hung juries.) The same can hold true in a societal context. Borrowing (heavily) a page from Edward Glaeser, Lehrer is a cheerleader for cities because they allow different kinds of people to interact with one another. “It is the human friction that creates the sparks,” he writes. This, too, seems intuitively right, but the way Lehrer deploys his “studies” to prove his point is troublesome. He quotes one that shows people to be better at solving problems when in the same physical space, as opposed to online. This is hardly evidence for the success of urban spaces. Physical reality is a big place. How many people, and in how large a space? I’m sure that there are other studies showing that online “friction”—there is certainly plenty of it—is a boon to problem-solving and innovation.