Table of Contents
BEST IELTS Academic Reading Test 512
IELTS ACADEMIC READING TEST 512- PASSAGE – 3
IELTS ACADEMIC READING TEST – 512
READING PASSAGE – 3
The Creative Spark
Back in the 1970s, Delos ‘Toby’ Cosgrove, a heart surgeon, was feeling frustrated. At that time, the field of open heart surgery was still in its infancy, and surgeons used a rigid ring to help restore the shape of a heart valve after surgery. Unfortunately, this ring did not work particularly well because it was too rigid to move with the human tissue. And although specialist medical labs and surgeons in operating theaters had sought to develop a better solution, nobody had found one that worked.
Then, some years later, Cosgrove happened to spot a kind of flexible hoop that 19th-century American women used for embroidering pieces of cloth. That’s when he had his ‘Aha!’ moment: why not utilize the sewing device and apply it to human hearts to create a valve that could move with human tissue? ‘Heart surgery and embroidery don’t usually appear in the same sentence,’ admits Cosgrove, who now runs the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. But the idea worked so well that it quickly became the dominant method in coronary care, and Cosgrove himself has since filed 30 patents for similarly unusual inventions.
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So what inspires this type of ‘Aha!’ moment? And can anybody– or, indeed, any institution set out to replicate moments like it in other areas? This question is becoming increasingly crucial as Europe and the US scramble to find ways of boosting productivity.
For although politicians and CEOs love to invoke the virtue of ‘innovation’– talking about serendipity is all the rage in the consultancy world– an answer to just what it is that sparks these flashes of creative genius remains unclear. Is it best achieved by training up specialists? Or should companies try to mix people up? Or should they simply refuse to meddle at all– and just hope that serendipity strikes?
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Opinions vary. When, for example, Cosgrove looks back at his own career, he attributes his moments of serendipity to at least two things. One is hard to replicate: Cosgrove is severely dyslexic, and thinks that this means he has always been forced to improvise in creative ways. But a second, more general, lesson is that specialists– such as heart surgeons– need constantly to create situations where they can collide with new ideas, be that 19th-century embroidery or anything else.
Cosgrove is a firm believer, for example, in the value of traveling widely into different worlds, not only via cyberspace but in day-to-day life, be that to conferences, work trips or simply holidays. ‘Many of my ideas were inspired by comparisons and objects outside heart surgery … or required the collaboration of professionals in other disciplines,’ he says. ‘Innovation happens at the margins, where one discipline rubs up against another.’
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But collisions with the unexpected need not always involve travel. The MIT Media Lab in Boston, for example, likes to take academics from completely different disciplines and force them to work side by side to spark unusual ideas. The research and development wings of companies such as 3M, the gigantic industrial conglomerate, do something similar in their own laboratories. However, such collisions do not need to happen outside companies or in dedicated research laboratories. John Seely Brown, for example, is a scientist who previously ran the Palo Alto Research Center.
In decades past, the center did indeed try to spark innovation by urging academics from disparate disciplines to collaborate. These days, though, Brown co-chairs a project known as the Deloitte Center for the Edge, which tries to encourage institutions to become more creative at the edge of organizations or where different departments collide with each other– or with the outside world. After all, that is where boundaries can be turned upside down. ‘When we are engaging in a creative activity, we are taking the familiar and making it strange … when we behave imaginatively, we do just the opposite: we make the strange familiar,’ he argues.
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Another school of thought argues that what is most important is creating some organizational mess. A few years ago, for example, Mark de Rond, a researcher at Cambridge University Judge Business School, examined a series of scientific breakthroughs– such as the discovery of penicillin, Viagra or DNA– and concluded that most emerged as a result of ‘controlled sloppiness’ or unplanned accidents that arose when scientists had the freedom to roam. ‘Serendipity … may benefit from a degree of sloppiness, inefficiency, dissent, failure, and tenacity,’ he observes, pointing out that Alexander Fleming stumbled on penicillin only because his bench was so wildly messy that experiments were cross-infected.
Of course, this is not a popular message for most corporate or political leaders to absorb. These days some trendy tech companies, such as Google or Facebook, have made a virtue out of letting their employees ‘roam’ at regular intervals. But most do not. After all, ‘sloppiness’ often looks costly and is hard to justify in a world where the cult of efficiency tends to rule supreme.
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Either way, the next time you hear a politician or CEO invoke the word ‘innovation’ it is worth pondering Cosgrove’s embroidery hoop. And if you are lucky enough to have a holiday this summer, remember that ‘roaming’ is not just about rest– sometimes it can end up being more productive than anything we ever do at work.
Questions 27-33
Do the following statements agree with the views/claims of the writer in Reading Passage 3? In boxes 27-33 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE – if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE – if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN – if there is no information on this
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27. Cosgrove was one of the early pioneers of open heart surgery.
28. In the 1900s, Cosgrove was frustrated by the attitude of his colleagues.
29. Cosgrove came across the idea for his flexible loop by accident.
30. At first, people were skeptical about how well Cosgrove’s idea would work.
31. Cosgrove has since made many refinements to his original idea.
32. Innovation is an important factor in making economic activity more efficient.
33. More specialist training would certainly lead to more innovative ideas.
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Questions 34-40
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
34. How does the writer view Cosgrove’s claim that his dyslexia has made him creative?
A. She doubts if it is the main stimulus.
B. She is skeptical about the severity of his condition.
C. She suggests that it may not help others to emulate him.
D. She acknowledges that not everyone will accept this explanation.
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35. What is suggested about Cosgrove’s notion of ‘traveling widely’?
A. It shouldn’t be confused with the idea of leisure time.
B. It needs updating to take account of the role of the internet.
C. It is of no more than peripheral importance to most professions.
D. It underlines the importance of events where different specialists interact.
36. What policy is common to both the MIT Media lab and 3M?
A. actively encouraging disagreements between academics
B. obliging certain individuals to co-operate with each other
C. limiting the extent to which employees travel on business
D. allowing a degree of collaboration with certain rival institutions
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37. The writer quotes from John Seeley Brown in order to
A. emphasize how innovation can be encouraged within organizations.
B. question why organizations need to be divided into departments.
C. show that certain ideas about creativity are now dated.
D. present a contrasting view to Cosgrove’s.
38. What is the writer doing in the fifth paragraph?
A. suggesting that Seedly Brown’s ideas may have been superseded
B. reviewing other researchers’ responses to Seedly Brown’s ideas
C. adding weight to the arguments put forward by Seedly Brown
D. outlining an alternative view of creativity to Seedly Brown’s
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39. Alexander Fleming is given as an example of somebody whose
A. work wouldn’t be taken so seriously in today’s world
B. discovery wasn’t the result of a systematic approach
C. methods shouldn’t be regarded as a model to follow.
D. experiments weren’t as uncontrolled as they seemed.
40. According to the writer, Google and Facebook differ from most companies in
A. the level of investment they commit to research projects.
B. the value they place in the efficient use of human resources.
C. their willingness to give staff enough space to develop new ideas.
D. their attitude towards employees who do not follow set procedures.
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ANSWERS
27. YES
28. NO
29. YES
30. NOT GIVEN
31. NOT GIVEN
32. YES
33. NO
34. C
35. D
36. B
37. A
38. D
39. B
40. C
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