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Creativity for Innovation Management
by Ina Goller John BessantCreativity for Innovation Management is a rigorous yet applied guide which illustrates what creativity is, why it matters, and how it can be developed at both individual and group levels. Unlike many technique-oriented books, this book will combine theory and practice, drawing on the latest research in psychology, organizational behaviour, innovation and entrepreneurship. This exciting new text outlines the necessary skills and competences for innovative and creative processes. It provides opportunities to explore these and also to develop them via a wide variety of activities linked to relevant tools and techniques, as well as a range of case studies. By working through key competence areas at personal and then team levels, students then have an opportunity to practice and enhance these skills. This will be complemented by online resources which will provide students with access to key tools and techniques plus activities to help develop their creativity. This textbook is ideal for students of innovation, management and entrepreneurship, as well as professionals in those industries that want to excel by developing and applying their own creativity at work.
Creativity in Large-Scale Contexts: Guiding Creative Engagement and Exploration
by Jonathan S. FeinsteinA new model for smarter creativity Innovators and creators work in cultural, economic, and social contexts that shape their work. These contexts are large-scale, filled with overwhelming multitudes of elements and possibilities—but these contexts can be fruitfully "mined" by creative teams. Creativity in Large-Scale Contexts, by Yale professor Jonathan S. Feinstein, introduces a groundbreaking new "network model" to describe how successful innovation can be focused, generated, and accelerated. The book will help teams and organizations innovate smarter and faster. Feinstein argues that in large-scale contexts creativity happens most efficiently when it is actively "guided" by a creative leader or team. Guiding creativity involves understanding, navigating, and actively using the cultural context, identifying puzzles and opportunities, and spanning these tensions to create novel connections. With thoughtful guidance, creators and creative teams can find their way through the thicket of possibilities faster, smarter, and with less waste. Creativity in Large-Scale Contexts draws on case studies of famous creators including Virginia Woolf, Albert Einstein, Indigenous artist Clifford Possum, transgender activist and engineer Lynn Conway, and Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey. Empirically grounded, this book will be essential for teaching and managing creativity and innovation and will open new avenues for future intellectual growth and practice in the field.
Creativity in Management Education: A Systemic Rediscovery
by José-Rodrigo Córdoba-PachónThis book proposes a new way to consider creativity in management education, inviting educators to rediscover themselves in the process. To date, creativity in management is a valuable skill, but one which has been institutionalized and subordinated to metrics such as economic growth, knowledge disciplining and employability. After a critical analysis using Foucault’s governmentality to identify how creativity is being organized in management education, this book examines diverse initiatives intended to nurture creativity. Then, and through a systemic recontextualization of governmentality and other notions like play, it provides conceptual and practical guidance derived from the author’s own self-narratives (games) as student and educator. The book concludes with important reflections, implications and guidelines for the nurturing in creativity in management education and life in general. This book will be a valuable reading for creativity and innovation scholars, academics working in management education and students in general.
Creativity in product innovation
by Jacob Goldenberg David MazurskyCreativity in Product Innovation describes a remarkable technique for improving the creativity process in product design. Certain 'regularities' in product development are identifiable, objectively verifiable and consistent for almost any kind of product. These regularities are described by the authors as Creativity Templates. This book describes the theory and implementation of these templates, showing how they can be used to enhance the creative process and thus enable people to be more productive and focused. Representing the culmination of years of research on the topic of creativity in marketing, the Creativity Templates approach has been recognised as a breakthrough in such journals as Science, Journal of Marketing Research, Management Science, and Technological Forecasting and Social Change. It has been successfully implemented through workshops in international companies including Philips Consumer Electronics, Ford Motor Co. , Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, Kodak, Coca-Cola and many others.
Creativity in the Design Process: Exploring the Influences of the Digital Evolution (Springer Series in Design and Innovation #18)
by Carmen BrunoThe book provides an open and integrated view of creativity in the 21st century, merging theories and case studies from design, psychology, sociology, computer science and human-computer interaction, while benefitting from a continuous dialogue within a network of experts in these fields. An exploratory journey guides the reader through the major social, human, and technological changes that influence human creative abilities, highlighting the fundamental factors that need to be stimulated for creative empowerment in the digital era. The book reflects on why and how design practice and design research should explore digital creativity, and promote the empowerment of creativity, presenting two flexible tools specifically developed to observe the influences on multiple level of human creativity in the digital transition, and understand their positive and negative effect on the creative design process. An overview of the main influences and opportunities collected by adopting the two tools are presented with guidelines to design actions to empower the process for innovation.
Creativity in the Digital Age (Springer Series on Cultural Computing)
by Nelson Zagalo Pedro BrancoThis edited book discusses the exciting field of Digital Creativity. Through exploring the current state of the creative industries, the authors show how technologies are reshaping our creative processes and how they are affecting the innovative creation of new products. Readers will discover how creative production processes are dominated by digital data transmission which makes the connection between people, ideas and creative processes easy to achieve within collaborative and co-creative environments. Since we rely on our senses to understand our world, perhaps of more significance is that technologies through 3D printing are returning from the digital to the physical world. Written by an interdisciplinary group of researchers this thought provoking book will appeal to academics and students from a wide range of backgrounds working or interested in the technologies that are shaping our experiences of the future.
Creativity in the Imagination Age: Theories, Practice and Application
by S M MoinIn the imagination age, organizations need to harness the power of creativity and innovation in order to survive and thrive. Grounded in academic and applied research, this book offers invaluable insights into these concepts from an interdisciplinary perspective. Through compelling narratives, the author critically discusses the theories and models that will empower the thinking of researchers, entrepreneurs and leaders. Revealing how the fourth industrial revolution can put our creative minds into play with enormous opportunities to solve problems and make meaning, the book invites us to debate how human and emerging technologies will write the next chapter of human history. It covers philosophical approaches to creativity, the characteristics of creative teams, the components of individual creativity as well as the role of imagination and associative thinking in fostering creativity and innovation.
Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration
by Ed Catmull Amy WallaceFrom Ed Catmull, co-founder (with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter) of Pixar Animation Studios, comes an incisive book about creativity in business—sure to appeal to readers of Daniel Pink, Tom Peters, and Chip and Dan Heath.Creativity, Inc. is a book for managers who want to lead their employees to new heights, a manual for anyone who strives for originality, and the first-ever, all-access trip into the nerve center of Pixar Animation—into the meetings, postmortems, and &“Braintrust&” sessions where some of the most successful films in history are made. It is, at heart, a book about how to build a creative culture—but it is also, as Pixar co-founder and president Ed Catmull writes, &“an expression of the ideas that I believe make the best in us possible.&”For nearly twenty years, Pixar has dominated the world of animation, producing such beloved films as the Toy Story trilogy, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Up, and WALL-E, which have gone on to set box-office records and garner thirty Academy Awards. The joyousness of the storytelling, the inventive plots, the emotional authenticity: In some ways, Pixar movies are an object lesson in what creativity really is. Here, in this book, Catmull reveals the ideals and techniques that have made Pixar so widely admired—and so profitable.As a young man, Ed Catmull had a dream: to make the first computer-animated movie. He nurtured that dream as a Ph.D. student at the University of Utah, where many computer science pioneers got their start, and then forged a partnership with George Lucas that led, indirectly, to his founding Pixar with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter in 1986. Nine years later, Toy Story was released, changing animation forever. The essential ingredient in that movie&’s success—and in the thirteen movies that followed—was the unique environment that Catmull and his colleagues built at Pixar, based on philosophies that protect the creative process and defy convention, such as:• Give a good idea to a mediocre team, and they will screw it up. But give a mediocre idea to a great team, and they will either fix it or come up with something better.• If you don&’t strive to uncover what is unseen and understand its nature, you will be ill prepared to lead. • It&’s not the manager&’s job to prevent risks. It&’s the manager&’s job to make it safe for others to take them.• The cost of preventing errors is often far greater than the cost of fixing them. • A company&’s communication structure should not mirror its organizational structure. Everybody should be able to talk to anybody.• Do not assume that general agreement will lead to change—it takes substantial energy to move a group, even when all are on board.
Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration
by Amy Wallace Ed CatmullCreativity, Inc. is a book for managers who want to lead their employees to new heights, a manual for anyone who strives for originality, and the first-ever, all-access trip into the nerve center of Pixar Animation—into the meetings, postmortems, and “Braintrust” sessions where some of the most successful films in history are made. It is, at heart, a book about how to build a creative culture—but it is also, as Pixar co-founder and president Ed Catmull writes, “an expression of the ideas that I believe make the best in us possible.”<P><P> For nearly twenty years, Pixar has dominated the world of animation, producing such beloved films as the Toy Story trilogy, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Up, and WALL-E, which have gone on to set box-office records and garner thirty Academy Awards. The joyousness of the storytelling, the inventive plots, the emotional authenticity: In some ways, Pixar movies are an object lesson in what creativity really is. Here, in this book, Catmull reveals the ideals and techniques that have made Pixar so widely admired—and so profitable.<P> As a young man, Ed Catmull had a dream: to make the first computer-animated movie. He nurtured that dream as a Ph.D. student at the University of Utah, where many computer science pioneers got their start, and then forged a partnership with George Lucas that led, indirectly, to his founding Pixar with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter in 1986. Nine years later, Toy Story was released, changing animation forever. The essential ingredient in that movie’s success—and in the thirteen movies that followed—was the unique environment that Catmull and his colleagues built at Pixar, based on philosophies that protect the creative process and defy convention, such as:<P> * Give a good idea to a mediocre team, and they will screw it up. But give a mediocre idea to a great team, and they will either fix it or come up with something better.<P> * If you don’t strive to uncover what is unseen and understand its nature, you will be ill prepared to lead. <P> * It’s not the manager’s job to prevent risks. It’s the manager’s job to make it safe for others to take them.<P> * The cost of preventing errors is often far greater than the cost of fixing them. <P> * A company’s communication structure should not mirror its organizational structure. Everybody should be able to talk to anybody.<P> Chosen for Mark Zuckerberg's "A Year of Books"
Creativity, Inc. (The Expanded Edition): Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration
by Ed Catmull Amy WallaceThe co-founder and longtime president of Pixar updates and expands his 2014 New York Times bestseller on creative leadership, reflecting on the management principles that built Pixar&’s singularly successful culture, and on all he learned during the past nine years that allowed Pixar to retain its creative culture while continuing to evolve.&“Might be the most thoughtful management book ever.&”—Fast Company For nearly thirty years, Pixar has dominated the world of animation, producing such beloved films as the Toy Story trilogy, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Up, and WALL-E, which have gone on to set box-office records and garner eighteen Academy Awards. The joyous storytelling, the inventive plots, the emotional authenticity: In some ways, Pixar movies are an object lesson in what creativity really is. Here, Catmull reveals the ideals and techniques that have made Pixar so widely admired—and so profitable. As a young man, Ed Catmull had a dream: to make the first computer-animated movie. He nurtured that dream as a Ph.D. student, and then forged a partnership with George Lucas that led, indirectly, to his founding Pixar with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter in 1986. Nine years later, Toy Story was released, changing animation forever. The essential ingredient in that movie&’s success—and in the twenty-five movies that followed—was the unique environment that Catmull and his colleagues built at Pixar, based on philosophies that protect the creative process and defy convention, such as:• Give a good idea to a mediocre team and they will screw it up. But give a mediocre idea to a great team and they will either fix it or come up with something better.• It&’s not the manager&’s job to prevent risks. It&’s the manager&’s job to make it safe for others to take them.• The cost of preventing errors is often far greater than the cost of fixing them.• A company&’s communication structure should not mirror its organizational structure. Everybody should be able to talk to anybody.Creativity, Inc. has been significantly expanded to illuminate the continuing development of the unique culture at Pixar. It features a new introduction, two entirely new chapters, four new chapter postscripts, and changes and updates throughout. Pursuing excellence isn&’t a one-off assignment but an ongoing, day-in, day-out, full-time job. And Creativity, Inc. explores how it is done.
Creativity, Innovation, and Change Across Cultures (Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture)
by David D. Preiss Marcos Singer James C. KaufmanThis book offers interdisciplinary, multicultural, and international perspectives on the interrelation between culture, innovation, change and creative forces. Its wide-ranging contributions present theoretical and empirical approaches and with reference to different domains across disciplines including psychology, education, social sciences, humanities, and engineering. The authors demonstrate how urgent social, environmental, technological, and economic challenges can benefit from individual, and community creativity to effect change. In this volume, “culture” refers to sociocultural differences, educational culture, media culture, organizational culture, technological culture, ethnic differences within a culture, and digital culture. Its contributors offer fresh insights on how creativity, innovation, and change can propel us forward and offer hope for the future across these many different forms of culture. They offer both granular studies of creativity and innovation at work in particular contexts and macro-level discussion on how they affect organizational culture, the culture of a discipline and society at large. This cross-cultural analysis of creativity, innovation and approaches to change will particularly appeal to practitioners and researchers in the fields of psychology, organizational behavior and education.
Creativity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship: The Only Way to Renew Your Organization (The Little Big Book Series)
by H. James HarringtonPeople with ideas are dreamers. People who get things done are doers. One doer is worth eight dreamers. There are three kinds of people who make up an innovator. There are inventors (people who have new and unique ideas), problem solvers (people who have ideas about how to correct a previous error) and entrepreneurs (people who transform ideas into realities). Put them altogether they spell "innovator." Most innovative books today focus on ways to create new and unique ideas; some of them also address problem-solving, but this is less than 10% of the methodologies that the innovator needs to master. The approaches used in this book transform an idea into reality, or to put it another way, deliver innovative products to make a profit for the organization and instill pride in its employees. This means that every step in the process needs to have innovation applied to it in order to meet the expectations and demands of today's sophisticated customer. This book is designed to help the reader and their organization complete the complex process of bringing a new product to market by presenting what is expected at each step in the cycle and providing step-by-step instructions on what to do at each specific step. In large to mid-sized organizations this book is designed to help each individual understand how they fit into the innovative cycle and explains why they should be more creative related to the work they do and more conscious of the contributions they can make. It emphasizes the importance of every individual contributing to the organization's innovative process. The book is designed to help the organization understand its Innovation Systems Cycle. In the early part of the cycle it focuses on weeding out projects that do not have the potential to produce value-added results to the stakeholders. By using the guidelines outlined in this book, an organization can reduce its new project failure rate by as much as 50% which should result in almost doubling the organization’s new product output thereby increasing profits by as much as 15%.
Creativity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship Across Cultures: Theory and Practices (Innovation, Technology, and Knowledge Management)
by Elias G. Carayannis Igor N. DubinaThe aim of this volume is to further develop the relationship between culture and manifold phenomena of creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship in order to promote further and better understanding how, why, and when these phenomena are manifested themselves across different cultures. Currently, cross-cultural research is one of the most dynamically and rapidly growing areas. At the same time, creativity, inventiveness, innovation, and entrepreneurship are championed in the literature as the critical element that is vital not just for companies, but also for the development of societies. A sizable body of research demonstrates that cultural differences may foster or inhibit creative, inventive, innovative and entrepreneurial activities; and each culture has its own strengths and weaknesses in these regards. Better understanding of cultural diversity in these phenomena can help to build on strengths and overcome weaknesses. Cross-cultural studies in this field represent a comparatively new class of interdisciplinary research. This is a field where cultural, sociological, psychological, historical, economic, management, technology and business studies closely intersect. In this book, a global team of researchers representing Europe, Asia, and the Americas review, analyze, structure, systematize and discuss various concepts, assumptions, speculations, theories, and empirical research which focus on the effect of national cultures on creativity, invention, innovation, and entrepreneurship. They argue that national culture is not only an extremely important determinant of innovation and business development, but also demonstrate that some aspects relating to these phenomena may be universal among all cultures, thereby identifying those factors that may easily be transferred across cultures from those that are unique to their specific context.
Creativity, Innovation and the Cultural Economy (Routledge Studies in Global Competition)
by Andy C. Pratt Paul JeffcuttThis collection brings together international experts from different continents to examine creativity and innovation in the cultural economy. In doing so, the collection provides a unique contemporary resource for researchers and advanced students. As a whole, the collection addresses creativity and innovation in a broad organizational field of knowledge relationships and transactions. In considering key issues and debates from across this developing arena of the global knowledge economy, the collection pursues an interdisciplinary approach that encompasses Management, Geography, Economics, Sociology and Cultural Studies.
Creativity, Innovation and the Fourth Industrial Revolution: The da Vinci Strategy (Routledge Focus on Business and Management)
by Jon-Arild JohannessenThe most important goals for an organization in the Fourth Industrial Revolution will be innovation and enhanced performance. Creativity is a means for promoting these goals – a creative person is a productive person who uses all their resources to attain specific goals. Da Vinci Creativity should be understood as being focused on improving performance both at individual and organizational levels. Traditional organizations can be hierarchical, and thus rigid, at a time when the external environment is undergoing very rapid change. The aim of this book is to present an organizational model that develops leaders who are able to cope with the demands of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. In light of the increasing levels of innovation being experienced in society around us, Creativity, Innovation and the Fourth Industrial Revolution: The da Vinci Strategy offers an organizational theory that can be applied in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This book will be of interest to researchers, academics, and students in the fields of leadership, strategy, and technology and innovation management.
The Creativity Leap: Unleash Curiosity, Improvisation, and Intuition at Work
by Natalie Nixon"Natalie Nixon's new book provides a fresh primer on how to cultivate creativity in the workplace.&” —Nir Eyal, bestselling author of Hooked and IndistractableToo many people associate creativity solely with the arts, even though to be an incredible scientist, engineer, or entrepreneur requires immense creativity. And it's the key to developing breakthrough products and services. Natalie Nixon, a creativity strategist with a background in cultural anthropology, fashion, and service design, says that in the fourth industrial revolution a creativity leap is needed to bridge the gap that exists between the churn of work and the highly sought-after prize called innovation.Nixon says that since humans are hardwired to be creative, it is a competency anyone can develop. She shows that it balances wonder (awe, audacity, and curiosity) with rigor (discipline, skill-building, and attention to detail), and that inquiry, improvisation, and intuitionare the key practices that increase those capacities. Drawing on interviews with fifty-six people from diverse backgrounds—farming, law, plumbing, architecture, perfumery, medicine, education, technology, and more—she offers illuminating examples of how creativity manifests in every kind of work. Combining creativity tools and techniques with real-world stories of innovative people and businesses, this book is a provocation, an inspiration, and an invitation to unleash the innate creativity that lies within each of us. It offers a more dynamic and integrative way to adapt and innovate, one that allows us the freedom to access our full human selves.
Creativity Loops–Based Decision Making: A Systems Thinking Approach
by Hassan Qudrat-UllahThis book presents an innovative framework for enhancing creativity in decision-making by applying systems thinking principles and tools. It is based on the premise that creativity is not a fixed trait that some people have and others don't, but a skill that can be learned and improved with practice and guidance. The book also argues that decision-making is not a linear or mechanical process that can be reduced to simple rules or formulas, but a dynamic and creative process that requires holistic and systemic thinking. The work also shows that systems thinking is not a complicated or abstract theory that only experts can use, but a practical and powerful tool that anyone can apply to understand and improve complex situations. The framework consists of six steps: problem identification, idea generation, idea selection, idea development, idea implementation, and monitoring and evaluating results and feedback. Readers will learn to use the framework to solve complex problems and generate innovative ideas in any context and domain. Through the systematic integration of existing models into a unified framework, the book contributes to ongoing dialogues regarding effective decision-making processes. It critically evaluates prominent models like the Creative Problem-Solving Model, the Rational Decision Making Model, and the Intuitive Decision Making Model. Researchers seeking insights into incorporating creativity into decision-making will find this book to be a valuable scholarly resource.
Creativity on Demand: The Dilemmas of Innovation in an Accelerated Age
by Eitan Y. WilfBusiness consultants everywhere preach the benefits of innovation—and promise to help businesses reap them. A trendy industry, this type of consulting generates courses, workshops, books, and conferences that all claim to hold the secrets of success. But what promises does the notion of innovation entail? What is it about the ideology and practice of business innovation that has made these firms so successful at selling their services to everyone from small start-ups to Fortune 500 companies? And most important, what does business innovation actually mean for work and our economy today? In Creativity on Demand, cultural anthropologist Eitan Wilf seeks to answer these questions by returning to the fundamental and pervasive expectation of continual innovation. Wilf focuses a keen eye on how our obsession with ceaseless innovation stems from the long-standing value of acceleration in capitalist society. Based on ethnographic work with innovation consultants in the United States, he reveals, among other surprises, how routine the culture of innovation actually is. Procedures and strategies are repeated in a formulaic way, and imagination is harnessed as a new professional ethos, not always to generate genuinely new thinking, but to produce predictable signs of continual change. A masterful look at the contradictions of our capitalist age, Creativity on Demand is a model for the anthropological study of our cultures of work.
Creativity & Problem Solving: The Brian Tracy Success Library (Brian Tracy Success Library)
by Brian TracyThe crucial element separating an exceptional career from a lackluster one is the ability to devise innovative solutions to work challenges. With research showing the direct relationship between ideas and profitability, creative thinking skills are vital to professional advancement. As one of the world's premiere success experts, Brian Tracy knows that creativity can be developed with practice and a few helpful tools. This concise book reveals 21 proven, practical techniques readers can use to immediately begin generating a stream of productive ideas, including how to: Stimulate the three primary triggers to creativity * Inspire a creative mindset in staff through recognition, rewards, and environment * Use methods such as Brainstorming, Zero-Based Thinking, Nominal Group Technique, and Lateral Thinking to solve problems, improve systems, devise new products, and come up with fresh, exciting marketing angles * Ask focused questions to generate elegant solutions * Understand the difference between mechanical and adaptive thinking * Rigorously evaluate new ideas . . .without shutting down the creative impulse Containing mind-stimulating exercises and down-to-earth strategies, this career-changing book helps anyone tap into the root source of their own intuitive genius.
Creativity Research: An Inter-Disciplinary and Multi-Disciplinary Research Handbook (Routledge Studies in Innovation, Organizations and Technology)
by Eric ShiuCompared to its ‘cousin’ innovation, academic research on creativity has been less well covered in journals and books. This is despite the fact that creativity has a profound role in many different subject disciplines. This book is a unique collection of some of the latest research from a range of leading creativity researchers. Providing a clear understanding of the main concepts, this book: Introduces creativity from an inter-disciplinary perspective Discusses the environmental determinants of creativity development Explores creativity research in the differing disciplines of business, music and education Creativity Research will be of interest and importance to researchers across a variety of subject disciplines, as well as students and practitioners of creativity, innovation and organizational behaviour, amongst others.
Creativity Rules: Get Ideas Out of Your Head and into the World
by Tina SeeligInternational bestselling author and Stanford University professor Tina Seelig adapts her wildly popular creativity course to a practical guide on how to put your best ideas into action.For the past fifteen years, Professor Tina Seelig has taught her Stanford students how to creatively unleash their unique entrepreneurial spirits. In Creativity Rules, she shares this wisdom, offering inspiration and guidance to transform ideas into reality. Readers will learn how to work through the four steps of The Invention Cycle: Imagination (envisioning things that do not yet exist), Creativity (applying your imagination to address a challenge), Innovation (applying creativity to generate unique solutions), and Entrepreneurship (applying innovation, to bring ideas to fruition, where our ideas then gain the power to inspire the imaginations of others). Using each step to build upon the last, you can create something much complex, interesting, and powerful.Creativity Rules provides the essential knowledge to take a compelling idea and transform it into something extraordinary.
Creativity under the Gun at Litmus Corporation
by Teresa M. AmabileTeaches students to diagnose the circumstances under which time pressure can facilitate or hinder creativity. A team's creative "genius", Miles Grady, who previously conceptualized a revolutionary material for an important new product, must now significantly change that material so that the team can create an entirely new business. This early new business development project, while supported by management, has a looming deadline for proof-of-concept. The deadline has already been extended, but the team does not seem close to the breakthrough it needs. The team's leader, Stanley Carmine, who has managed to get a few weeks' extension from management, needs to figure out how best to manage Grady under the looming deadline. He studies Grady's past "daily laboratory logs" to discover the connections, if any, between time pressure, other circumstances, and Grady's level of creativity.
Creativity Unlimited
by Micael DahlenFlying in the face of current thinking, this book suggests that we do not need to 'think outside the box' in our quest for creativity, rather we should rethink the way we look 'inside the box'. This idea will resonate only too well with those who have endeavoured to be creative by thinking outside that box, only to have their attempts scuppered by the constraints of bureaucracy and organizational politics. Instead of fighting a losing battle, the author suggests that creativity should be worked at within the constraints of the organizational box, but that space needs to be grown and allowed to be shaken up. Only by experimenting, mutating and finding new directions can you uncover business paths that lead to success. The reader is encouraged not to free themselves from all their knowledge and experiences (the thinking outside the box method) but to use their knowledge and experience in new ways. The book is structured around three key steps: Expanding the box: so that the pieces of the puzzle in it can move around more freely Filling the box: with even more knowledge, and how to get these new pieces of the puzzle to connect with the existing ones Shaking the box: so that the pieces fall into new places and form new patterns. The book shows that anybody can be creative. The creative methods suggested in the book will be linked to real business examples from which techniques have been developed to help their implementation. Numerous exercises and 'eye-openers' form part of the practical implementation of Micael Dahlén's ideas. The book is framed by models and concepts of how creativity works (the creative process, the creative person and the creative result) and what its effects are.
The Creator's Code
by Amy WilkinsonEach of us has the capacity to spot opportunities, invent products, and build businesses--even $100 million businesses.How do some people turn ideas into enterprises that endure? Why do some people succeed when so many others fail? The Creator's Code unlocks the six essential skills that turn small notions into big companies. This landmark book is based on 200 interviews with today's leading entrepreneurs including the founders of LinkedIn, Chipotle, eBay, Under Armour, Tesla Motors, SpaceX, Spanx, Airbnb, PayPal, Jetblue, Gilt Groupe, Theranos, and Dropbox. Over the course of five years, Amy Wilkinson conducted rigorous interviews and analyzed research across many different fields. From the creators of the companies ranging from Yelp to Chobani to Zipcar, she found that entrepreneurial success works in much the same way. Creators are not born with an innate ability to conceive and build $100 million enterprises. They work at it. They all share fundamental skills that can be learned, practiced, and passed on. The Creator's Code reveals six skills that make creators of all kinds of endeavors breakthrough. These skills aren't rare gifts or slim chance talents. Entrepreneurship, Wilkinson demonstrates, is accessible to everyone. The book's insights provide core guidance for success in the new world of work.
The Creator's Code
by Amy WilkinsonKevin Plank was relatively small for an American footballer, and when he weighed the cotton T-shirt he wore under his team uniform, he found it weighed three pounds because it was so drenched in sweat. Knowing he couldn't hinder himself in this way, he set about finding a material that wasn't so absorbent. Going to a local fabric shop, he soon learned that synthetic materials would not take in as much sweat, so he had a shirt made and found it added just four ounces over the course of a game. When he gave some team-mates samples to try, they also soon saw the advantages. He began to produce the shirts commercially, and now Under Armour is a $2 billion global brand used by people from every sport. Packed with fascinating and inspirational tales of success, Amy Wilkinson's brilliant book explains the six essential skills required by entrepreneurs to achieve their dreams. Based on in-depth interviews with the founders of numerous global brands, from eBay to Spanx, from LinkedIn to PayPal, she shows just what they did and what set them apart. For the key to being a successful entrepreneur isn't necessarily about being 'first', it is about being the 'only' one, and devising a new formula where none previously existed. Above all, these stories show how - if you follow the right steps - anyone can become a successful entrepreneur.