Powering the great ongoing changes of our time is the rise of human creativity as the defining feature of economic life. Creativity has come to be valued, because new technologies, new industries and new wealth flow from it. And as a result, our lives and society have begun to echo with creative ideas. It is our commitment to creativity in its varied dimensions that forms the underlying spirit of our age.

Creativity is essential to the way we live and work today, and in many senses always has been. The big advances in standard of living–-not to mention the big competitive advantages in the marketplace--always have come from” better recipes, not just more cooking.” One might argue that’s not strictly true. One might point out, for instance, that during the long period from the early days on the Industrial Revolution to modern times, much of the growth in productivity and material wealth in the industrial nations came not just from creative inventions like the steam engine, but from the widespread application of “cooking in quantity” business methods like massive division of labor, concentration of assets, vertical integration and economies of scale. But those methods themselves were creative developments.

参考译文：

作为经济生活所表明的特征，人类社会创造力的提升为我们这个时代正在发生的巨大的变化提供了巨大的动力。由于许多新的技术，新兴的工业以及新的财富都源自于创造力，所以，它的价值业已凸现出来。因此，各种创新的观念开始在我们的生活和社会中传播开来。正是人们在各个领域对创造力的认同才形成了我们这个时代精神的基础。

创造力对我们当今的生活和工作方式至关重要，而且在许多方面始终如此。生活水平的大幅度提高总是来源于更好的食谱，而不只是烹饪更多的食品，更不用说在市场条件下那些大的竞争优势了。然而，有人则会认这并不完全正确。比如说，有人也许会指出从早期的工业化时代到现代这么长的时期里，一些工业国家的生产力的大幅度提高和物资财富的大量增长并不仅仅是来自于象蒸气机这样的创造性的发明;而且还得益于“大量烹饪”商业模式的广泛使用。如大规模的劳动力的分工，资产的集中，纵向联合以及规模经济等，但是所有这些模式本身就是创造性的发展。