Bicultural people who view their cultural identities as blended, rather than in conflict with one another, are the ones who tend to exhibit greater originality in their thinking—at least when they’re in situations that draw on both their cultures, like a fusion restaurant or a cosmopolitan city.232 “Internalizing distinct cultural perspectives and finding the thread that connects them can enhance creativity,” the authors of one such study write. They suggest multicultural education and even international cuisine can help people get into the culturally blended headspace.

Chris Crandall, the professor we met a few chapters ago, explained that people who are on the periphery of all sorts of groups are often freer to innovate and change social norms. For example, he says, “Fashion norms come from the bottom up. American urban youth culture has more freedom because they’re on the outs with status quo forces,” he told me. Later, high-status people monetize those outsider innovations. Outsiders are already not concerned with what the in-crowd thinks of them, so they have more leeway to experiment and come up with the next iThing or bestseller. We see this outsider’s innovation phenomenon among immigrants in the U.S. today: statistically, they are more likely than native-born Americans to start businesses,233 to hold high-quality patents,234 and to have children who become highly educated.235

Freud believed that creative people have a “looseness of repression.”236 Artists’ minds, he posited, work like those of children engaged in make-believe or an adult in the midst of a dream. Similarly, being in a strange land seems to liberate you from normal thought patterns. For one thing, living abroad might simply expand the number of ideas you’re exposed to—as long as you try to absorb the local culture, rather than cloister yourself.237 What’s more, people who are outsiders to a culture tend to seek out “unconventional knowledge,”238 as one study put it. That made me think of a Citibank ad239 from a few years ago, in which an American woman in Iceland takes a dip in the Blue Lagoon and realizes the silica mud at its bottom would make for a great face mask. (The upshot: she needs a Citibank line of credit for her new business!) Leaving aside the probable illegality of exporting chunks of a major tourist attraction, the ad encapsulates the basic idea behind the creativity surge of foreignness. You go somewhere, you see something new with fresh eyes, and you apply it back home.