The increased outsourcing and automation of production and technical support jobs is of necessity shifting America's vocational focus. An earlier column (The Community Roots of the Arts) discussed urban theorist Richard Florida's belief (2004) that enhanced support for the creative vocations now provides a major hope for maintaining a vibrant culture and economy during the 21st century.

The creative vocations develop intellectual property: new ideas, technologies, and content. These are often turned into products that enhance employment and add economic value to the community. Florida reports a significant increase in our society's creative workforce during the past several decades. Creativity can occur in any enterprise but it's central to some fields, such as science, technology, and the arts.

Our society historically produced many creative advances related to processing and transporting our vast natural resources. Further, our country's size encouraged creative advances in rapid communication technologies. Creative people with similar interests tend to congregate, and this helps explain why Detroit and Los Angeles became the hubs of the automotive and film industries.

Manufacturing binds workers to an assigned location and schedule. Creativity can occur anywhere and anytime, and much current creative activity is electronically transportable.

But what is creativity? How does it emerge in our brain? How is it best nurtured in an individual brain, and in a society of brains? It's thus important to understand creativity, given the increasingly important cultural and economic roles it will play.

Nancy Andreasen's new book, The Creating Brain: The Neuroscience of Genius (2005) is an excellent non-technical analysis of what she and other scientists have learned about creativity and how to enhance it. Andreasen's distinguished research career in creativity underscores the book's authority. Her PhD in English Literature sparked her initial interest in creativity, and her MD and subsequent studies of cognitive abnormalities led her to the neurobiology of creativity.