From: Eric Maskin 
To: Dr Veljko Milutinovic 

1. Inventiveness/creativity in science is the ability to recognize a previously unseen connection between different ideas or phenomena.

2. My work was in mechanism design, the branch of economics that studies how to design institutions for achieving social goals. 
   What I did was to provide a criterion for determining which goals can be implemented by mechanisms and which cannot. 
   I discovered this criterion by trying out lots of examples and then recognizing a pattern.

3. I think the best way to encourage inventiveness in young people in Serbia and Montenegro is the way to encourage inventiveness anywhere else: 
   make a significant investment in good schools.

Sincerely,
Eric Maskin