I believe our only hope for the future is to adopt a new conception of human ecology, one in which we start to reconstitute our concept of the richness in human capacity.

Creativity is very much like literacy. We take it for granted that nearly everybody can learn to read and write. If a person can't read or write, you don't assume that this person is incapable of it, just that he or she hasn't learned how to do it. The same is true of creativity.

People over the age of thirty were born before the digital revolution really started. We've learned to use digital technology-laptops, cameras, personal digital assistants, the Internet-as adults, and it has been something like learning a foreign language. Most of us are okay, and some are even expert. We do e-mails and PowerPoint, surf the Internet, and feel we're at the cutting edge. But compared to most people under thirty and certainly under twenty, we are fumbling amateurs. People of that age were born after the digital revolution began. They learned to speak digital as a mother tongue.

To realize our true creative potential - in our organizations, in our schools and in our communities - we need to think differently about ourselves and towards each other. We must learn to be creative.

The dropout crisis is just the tip of an iceberg. What it doesn't count are all the kids who are in school but being disengaged from it, who don't enjoy it, who don't get any real benefit from it.

Being wrong doesn't mean being creative - but if you aren't afraid of being wrong, you can't be creative.

The combination of creative energies and the need to perform at the highest level to keep up with peers leads to an otherwise unattainable commitment to excellence.