Innovation and creativity have been the watchwords of progress for decades, used by business thinkers, tech gurus, military strategists, educators, and urban planners to describe the virtues that set prosperous modern societies apart from all others. Countries that honour creative people are dynamic and productive, our authorities tell us, while those that don’t are condemned to mediocrity and stagnation. In his new book, Thomas Frank blasts these received ideas apart, offering a bold account of the way that creativity and innovation have been used as a kind of ideological cover for policies that reinforce our new class system. Frank uncovers the insidious effects of centring innovation and creativity in rhetoric while, in practice, nurturing exactly the opposite. In the name of these noble goals, he shows, our leaders have reoriented our societies around white-collar knowledge work, cut taxes on the wealthy, deregulated banks, off-shored manufacturing, reoriented cities, and destroyed what is truly creative about human achievement. Deeply original, marked by Frank’s signature brilliance and acerbic wit, The Creativity Con is a troubling X-ray of postwar business and political cultures – and a crushing indictment of the cliches that have undergirded our many failures.
