Book summary “How to fly a horse”: summary

Introduction

You likely believe that creativity is a rare magical gift reserved for a chosen few geniuses. This cultural delusion makes you wait for sudden miraculous epiphanies instead of engaging in the daily work of invention.

Creation is not a rare magical gift reserved for geniuses, but an ordinary, relentless process of hard work, iteration, and problem-solving available to everyone.

Kevin Ashton demonstrates in How to Fly a Horse that true breakthroughs come from small steps, accumulated knowledge, and constant problem-solving. You will learn how human cognition, historical tools, and daily habits combine to produce new things.

The book answers several key questions about creation:

• How do ordinary people make groundbreaking discoveries?
• Why do experts often miss obvious anomalies?
• What daily routines sustain long-term creative work?

1. The Myth of Genius and Ordinary Creation

Creative breakthroughs are built on incremental steps and ordinary problem-solving behavior rather than sudden miraculous epiphanies or innate genius.

The creativity myth falsely asserts that creating is like magic, requiring rare innate gifts and resulting in dramatic flashes of insight. A letter published in Germany in 1815 claimed Mozart composed entirely in his head before writing down finished pieces, but Mozart's real letters and habits show he sketched, revised, used instruments, and struggled. The famous letter describing Mozart's effortless and complete composition process is a total forgery. The forgery was first shown by biographer Otto Jahn in 1856, and later confirmed by other scholars.

Edmond's Case Study

Twelve-year-old slave Edmond on Réunion island pollinated a barren vanilla vine in 1841, transforming global production from a few thousand beans in Mexico to millions worldwide. Breakthrough innovations are often short, incremental hops built on prior knowledge. Edmond discovered how to manually pollinate vanilla orchids after learning basic plant sexual reproduction concepts from Ferréol Bellier-Beaumont, who was inspired by botanist Konrad Sprengel. By using a bamboo tool to lift the floral membrane and press the anther and stigma together, Edmond solved a problem that had baffled European founders for centuries. Over the next decades, Réunion vanilla production grew from 1800 pounds to 200 tons, and Madagascar vanilla crops reached a value of 100 million dollars in some twentieth-century years.

You can perform the exact steps of le geste d'Edmond on vanilla orchids:

• Pull back the lip of a vanilla flower.
• Use a toothpick-sized piece of bamboo to lift the part that prevents self-fertilization.
• Gently pinch the pollen-bearing anther and pollen-receiving stigma together.

An End to Genius

Creative thinking is not a magical or distinct neurological state, but a special class of ordinary problem-solving behavior available to everyone. Allen Newell experienced his conversion experience regarding mechanical pattern recognition in 1954, and published "The Processes of Creative Thinking" in 1959. Pioneered by Newell and expanded by cognitive psychologist Robert Weisberg, research shows no statistical difference in the cognitive processes between skilled practitioners and amateurs. Creative outcomes result from normal thinking applied to complex problems. Robert Weisberg demonstrated through case studies of Picasso, Billie Holiday, and DNA discovery that major innovations can be explained without resorting to genius.

Lewis Terman started his longitudinal study in 1921, tracking 1,500 children with an average IQ of 151. High general intelligence or classified genius does not predict creative ability, as proven by longitudinal studies that missed major innovators. Terman's longitudinal study of gifted children with high IQ scores, known as Termites, produced many successful professionals and writers, but completely failed to select children who later became monumental innovators. Lewis Terman rejected William Shockley and Luis Alvarez from his Stanford-Binet IQ test study of gifted children, yet both grew up to win Nobel Prizes in physics.

Creation is the extraordinary outcome of ordinary acts combined with relentless work, discipline, and iteration rather than innate genius.

Without magic and genius, creation reduces to hard work, routine, and persistence through doubt. Because ideas do not emerge finished, creators must rely on iteration, starting with rough drafts and incremental steps. J.K. Rowling began a bestselling literary series while writing in cafés as her infant daughter slept. You share 24 hours of equal daily time available to everyone.

You can adopt these practices to build ordinary creation through discipline:

• Get up early and go home late.
• Turn down dates and give up weekends.
• Write and rewrite, review and revise.
• Start writing even when you do not know where to start, and do not stop when you cannot go on.
• Write a first sketch to break the blank page, ignoring its initial quality.

2. Cognitive Mechanics of Problem Solving

Human problem-solving follows a step-by-step cognitive path of overcoming functional fixedness and refining ideas through iteration.

Karl Duncker published On Problem Solving in 1935, which became a foundational text for cognitive psychologists studying how people achieve solutions. Karl Duncker made two applications to become a professor at the Frederick William University of Berlin, and both were rejected before publishing his masterwork. Google scholar lists 2,200 citations for Duncker's On Problem Solving.

Steps, Not Leaps

Human problem-solving follows a step-by-step cognitive path rather than sudden perceptive leaps or flashes of insight. Karl Duncker demonstrated through psychological experiments that people solve problems by starting with something familiar, evaluating it, identifying obstacles, and repeating until a satisfactory solution is found. Old ideas often obstruct new ones, creating resistance that must be overcome incrementally.

In Duncker's Box Problem, subjects struggle to attach a candle to a door using only a candle, matches, and a box of tacks until they overcome functional fixedness and view the tack box as a platform rather than just a container.

Popular stories of sudden eureka moments and unconscious incubation are largely apocryphal and unsupported by empirical research. Studies on incubation periods and feelings of knowing consistently fail to replicate. Famous anecdotes like Archimedes in the bath, Coleridge writing a poem in an opium sleep, or Kekulé visualizing a snake biting its tail describe daydreaming or ordinary conscious iteration rather than mystical unconscious processing.

Galileo exposed Archimedes's traditional displacement method for testing Hiero's golden crown as physically impractical, pointing to buoyancy and underwater weighing as the actual methods used. A University of Colorado study found that 4 percent of memories were recovered spontaneously, while the rest required ordinary thinking.

Overcoming Failure

Creation is not a single flash of inspiration but a long, monotonous journey defined by constant failure and iteration. True creation is an iterative process of trial and error where creators must be willing to produce bad work and embrace failure as a lesson rather than a final loss. Inventors and writers continually test, break, and delete their work to refine ideas.

James Dyson constructed 5,126 failed prototypes over five years before finally inventing a working cyclone-based vacuum cleaner that created a multibillion-dollar business. Stephen Wolfram erased 7 out of every 100 typed characters using the delete key over a decade.

3. Perception, Expertise, and Paradigm Shifts

The human brain heavily pre-processes sensory data. It filters out what does not fit prior knowledge or expected patterns. Only one three-thousandth of what is rendered on the retina reaches the basal nuclei.

Expertise creates selective attention that can blind observers to the unexpected, causing them to miss obvious anomalies right in front of them.

This efficient filtering is the hallmark of expertise, but it creates a blind spot for the unusual. You experience this phenomenon as inattentional blindness when focused on a specific task.

Radiologists viewing lung X-rays featuring a superimposed gorilla image missed the gorilla entirely in half a second glances because they were focused on looking for cancer nodules. Trafton Drew and Jeremy Wolfe at Harvard conducted research on inattentional blindness titled The Invisible Gorilla Strikes Again. People frequently fail to perceive obvious objects or facts when their attention is focused elsewhere or when locked into a prevailing paradigm.

Inattentional Blindness

Dogma can cause scientists to overlook physical evidence for over a century until someone is willing to believe their own eyes.

Pathologist Robin Warren observed bacteria living in the human stomach in 1979, despite long-standing medical dogma that stomachs were sterile. Collaborating with gastroenterologist Barry Marshall, they eventually proved that these bacteria caused ulcers, culminating in a Nobel Prize. Helicobacter pylori had been seen and not believed for 104 years since 1875. 1 out of every 3 stomachs contained the bacteria, and 90 percent of ulcer patients had the bacteria.

Robin Warren and Barry Marshall persisted through years of rejection and failed lab cultures until an accidental five-day delay during a holiday superbug outbreak allowed the bacteria to grow. The 2004 Nobel Prize was awarded to Warren and Marshall.

Scientific Revolutions

Science does not progress purely by smooth accumulation, but through periodic paradigm shifts that completely alter what researchers are able to see.

Thomas Kuhn argued that scientific fields operate within accepted paradigms that dictate normal work until anomalies accumulate into a crisis, leading to a revolution where old frameworks are replaced entirely. Thomas Kuhn spent 16 years at Harvard. His book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, sold 1 million copies. Thomas Kuhn struggled to reconcile old texts like Aristotle's Physics with modern science, leading him to formulate his theory of scientific revolutions.

Certainty acts as a psychological barricade against doubt, whereas true confidence functions as an adaptable bridge built through continuous questioning. While confidence is belief in oneself and remains flexible, certainty is an electrochemical feeling of absolute correctness that resists all contradictory evidence.

Leon Festinger and his colleagues infiltrated a doomsday cult led by Dorothy Martin in 1954 when her prophecy was tested. They observed how followers doubled down on their beliefs with elaborate new rationalizations when their specific end-of-the-world prophecy failed. They also studied 40 people in the Challenger space shuttle memory experiment, tracking how dissonance shapes human memory and conviction.

4. Inheritance and Global Tool Chains

Breakthroughs are built across generations through accumulated human work, global tool chains, and the removal of institutional barriers.

Generations, Not Giants

Creative breakthroughs rely on long chains of accumulated human work across generations rather than isolated acts by solitary geniuses. The famous aphorism about standing on the shoulders of giants misleads you by implying a hierarchy of elite individuals. Instead, human progress depends on thousands of ordinary generations of cumulative effort, tools, and shared knowledge.

Isaac Newton used the phrase about giants in a letter to Robert Hooke in 1676. He was quoting a line that had already been repeated and adapted by writers and theologians for centuries, starting with Bernard of Chartres in 1130.

The methodologies established by Rosalind Franklin and her peers led directly to modern DNA-based technologies, genetic profiling, and cancer risk identification linked to inherited genetic mutations. Rosalind Franklin herself carried mutated BRCA tumor suppressor genes inherited from her Ashkenazi ancestry, which ultimately caused her fatal ovarian cancer. You can now test for and mitigate this genetic vulnerability that once ended lives silently.

Astronomers discovered the RNA component glycolaldehyde orbiting a star four hundred million light-years from Earth.

Global Interconnectedness

Modern products emerge from vast, global tool chains that span continents, centuries, and thousands of generations, making no single individual capable of producing them alone. A single can of Coca-Cola depends on materials and processes gathered from across the planet, including bauxite mining in Australia, corn syrup production involving bacterial enzymes, and aluminum can manufacturing.

You can purchase a twelve-pack of Coca-Cola at an H-E-B grocery store in Austin, Texas, for $4.49, utilizing ingredients and manufacturing steps touching every continent except Antarctica. Workers produce 70,000,000 cans of Coca-Cola each day.

Far from eliminating the need for human labor, automation historically increased the demand for mental work and mass public education. While early mechanization replaced manual tasks like fulling cloth, automated looms required workers to process complex instructions, which ultimately spurred the creation of public education and widespread literacy.

In 1812, around one in twenty English teenagers near mill towns became weavers' apprentices, training their brains to handle complex patterns and paving the way for public schooling expansions. One-third of all Europeans could read by 1800. Almost all Europeans could read by 1900.

5. Motivation, Commitment, and Execution

Time is the raw material of creation. Because creative work is all-consuming, you must ruthlessly say no to invitations, interviews, and social engagements that drain your limited time and creative energy.

Protecting time through the strict refusal of outside demands is the most powerful creative tool available.

When a Hungarian professor contacted 275 famous creative people for interview requests, one-third declined outright due to lack of time, and another third ignored the request completely.

Routine and Persistence

Writer's block does not exist as a clinical paralysis. Rather, it is the fear of writing something bad or waiting for constant peak performance.

Woody Allen has written 49 full-length theatrical films and 8 stage plays in less than sixty years, out of 66 films credited to him between 1965 and 2014. You can overcome these blocks by adopting specific habits:

• Write something you think is bad.
• Force the work instead of waiting for inspiration.
• Change your physical atmosphere or take a short break to break mental impasses.

Igor Stravinsky maintained 10 hours of daily work, starting every single day by playing a Bach fugue on the piano. You can channel passion into a rigid, repetitive training process. Former baseball player George Shuba used a 44-ounce bat to execute 600 swings per night, totaling 46,200 swings every winter.

Action Versus Planning

Young children excel at complex collaborative challenges because they act and experiment immediately. Adults waste valuable time on planning, power struggles, and bureaucratic discussion.

In the marshmallow challenge, participants receive 20 sticks of uncooked spaghetti and 18 minutes to build a freestanding structure. Kindergarten towers reach an average height of 27 inches, compared to 10 inches for business school students, because children test the heavy marshmallow early. You can apply this lesson directly:

• Start building and experimenting immediately rather than spending time on upfront planning meetings.
• Test core assumptions and hidden constraints early in the project timeline.

Sustained creation requires relentless daily routine, protection of time, positive addiction to craft, and immediate experimental action over planning.

Faced with extreme urgency during World War II, Kelly Johnson established the Lockheed Skunk Works unit to build America's first fighter jet. The team designed and built the P-80 Shooting Star fighter jet in 143 days, beating the initial 180-day contract limit by 37 days and achieving a top speed of 502 miles an hour during its first flight with test pilot Milo Burcham flying Lulu Belle.

Intellectually secure leaders resolve disputes by demanding empirical proof rather than relying on ego-driven arguments. When 23-year-old Kelly Johnson told chief engineer Hall Hibbard that their Model 10 Electra airplane was unstable, Hibbard sent him back to the wind tunnel. Johnson drove 2400 miles back to Michigan and ran 72 tests in the wind tunnel until solving the design problem.

Creative organizations prioritize rituals of doing over the rituals of saying found in bureaucratic planning. Trey Parker and Matt Stone avoid heavy institutional oversight to make an episode of South Park in just 6 days, compared to the 6 months required by other production companies. Their South Park movie grossed 83 million dollars against a 21 million dollar budget, and the pair later won 9 Tony awards for The Book of Mormon in 2011. You can structure your own work by following these practices:

• Keep engineers and creators as close to the action as possible.
• Build an isolated and insulated workspace to foster a unique bond.
• Use a scoreboard calendar to keep the team focused on time.
• Respond to creative challenges and disputes by saying show me instead of arguing theoretically.
• Test ideas empirically to let the actual results resolve creative conflicts.
• Pair individuals with complementary roles where one leads the conceptual process and the other evaluates and refines.
• Maintain absolute equality within the partnership to eliminate energy-wasting power struggles.
• Talk problems through aloud with partners to combine ordinary conversation with problem-solution loops.
• Examine micro-level interactions and everyday rituals to understand how a group actually functions.
• Minimize internal meetings and keep the number of meeting participants strictly limited.
• Have high expectations about what to achieve, but low expectations about the exact rigid steps of how to achieve it.

10 Key Ideas

1. Creation is not a rare magical gift reserved for geniuses, but an ordinary, relentless process of hard work, iteration, and problem-solving available to everyone.
2. Creative breakthroughs are built on incremental steps and ordinary problem-solving behavior rather than sudden miraculous epiphanies or innate genius.
3. Human problem-solving follows a step-by-step cognitive path of overcoming functional fixedness and refining ideas through iteration.
4. Expertise creates selective attention that can blind observers to the unexpected, causing them to miss obvious anomalies right in front of them.
5. Breakthroughs are built across generations through accumulated human work, global tool chains, and the removal of institutional barriers.
6. Protecting time through the strict refusal of outside demands is the most powerful creative tool available.
7. Sustained creation requires relentless daily routine, protection of time, positive addiction to craft, and immediate experimental action over planning.
8. High general intelligence or classified genius does not predict creative ability, as proven by longitudinal studies that missed major innovators.
9. Science does not progress purely by smooth accumulation, but through periodic paradigm shifts that completely alter what researchers are able to see.
10. Creative breakthroughs rely on long chains of accumulated human work across generations rather than isolated acts by solitary geniuses.