Tim Hurson
Creativity expert & author of the bestselling book, Think Better: An Innovator’s Guide to Productive Thinking
“Mark Twain famously said, “An expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less, until finally he knows everything about nothing.” Tom Beakbane’s Consilience breaks the compulsive paradigm of parsing knowledge into ever smaller grains, segregated in suffocating silos. Beakbane’s driving prose demonstrates that true wisdom lies in the power of connecting ideas from different domains, not quarantining them. I am still vibrating from the power of this book.”
Some of the modes of thinking expressed in How to Understand Everything owe their genesis to Mindcamp. This annual conference that I started attending in 2002 held north of Toronto attracts creativity consultants, as well as others who wish to tune up their brains, from around the world. The conference’s mastermind is Tim Hurson.
Tim is a low-key, deep-thinking leader who promotes the philosophy that creativity is a learned skill and not something that you are born with. Like golf the more you practice the better you become. “You can learn how to play golf better,” he states and similarly “you can learn to use your mind a whole lot better.” The book, likewise recognizes that the human brain is highly adaptive or “plastic” – to use the neurological term, but at the same time our behavior falls into patterns and ruts. Tim teaches techniques that force the brain out of the ruts to create new and surprising ideas.
I was particularly gratified when Tim stated that the book had “enormous resonance.” I believe there are few people who know more about the challenges of breaking out of silos than Tim. He delivers productive thinking programs throughout the world and has keynoted in over 30 countries on six continents. His book Think Better (McGraw Hill, 2008) has become a classic in the field. Another of his books Never Be Closing (Penguin Portfolio, 2014) is a forward-thinking guide on consultative selling.