In Charles Darwin's survival of the fittest model, each step must go forward, life always progressing up the slope towards an evolutionary peak. So what happens when there is more than one slope, and life finds itself on the wrong one? Here biologist Andreas Wagner explores life's creative process and finds striking resemblances to how we humans work: There is a beguiling symmetry between the way Picasso struggled through 40 versions of Guernica and how evolution transformed a dinosaur's claw into a condor's wing. This new understanding is already revolutionizing our approach to problem-solving across the sciences, Wagner points out, and the process has broad applications for such fields as the economy and education.