We've got too many bohemians

Another strike against the emphasis of developing a creative class to rejuvenate cities.

Such striving for creativity can actually reduce innovation. Vying for creative credit, people routinely neglect good ideas "not invented here." And they often join the crowd behind a new idea just to declare their creativity, which distracts them from really trying to make that new idea work.

To succeed in academia, my graduate students and I had to learn to be less creative than we were initially inclined to be. Critics complain that schools squelch creativity, but most people are inclined to be more creative on the job than would be truly productive. So schooling is mostly about selecting the smarter and more diligent, and learning to show up day after day to somewhat boring jobs with ambiguous instructions.

What society needs is not more creativity or suggestions for change but better ways to encourage people to focus on important issues, identify the most promising ideas, and tell the right people about them. But our deification of creativity gets in the way.