A company's creativity is the source of new ideas that lead to everything from the tiniest improvements to dramatic innovations. Most companies are only too aware that their creative performance falls far short of potential. The problem is that they don't know what to do about it. Evidence shows that most creative acts are not planned for, and come from where they are least expected. It is impossible to predict what they will be, who will be involved, and when and how they will happen. This is the true nature of corporate creativity, and it is where a company's creative potential really.
Corporate Creativity is the ultimate guide for executives and managers looking to increase creativity and innovation in their companies. This anthology of provocative essays, drawn from the pages of Design Management Review and Design Management Journal, explores personal, team, and organizational creativity, and it is packed with insights from the most respected names in the industry: Jeffrey Mauzy, Robert Rassmussen, Leonard Glick, Gerald Nadler, Stefano Marzano, and many others. These experts reveal how leading companies foster a creative culture and maximize talent resources. Essays explore managing creative staff, improving creative abilities of employees, taking risks, designing teams, integrating design and corporate philosophy into the management process, branding, and much more. Corporate Creativity is a must-have for anyone working to maximize creative potential in the workplace. Allworth Press, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, publishes a broad range of books on the visual and performing arts, with emphasis on the business of art. Our titles cover subjects such as graphic design, theater, branding, fine art, photography, interior design, writing, acting, film, how to start careers, business and legal forms, business practices, and more. While we don't aspire to publish a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are deeply committed to quality books that help creative professionals succeed and thrive. We often publish in areas overlooked by other publishers and welcome the author whose expertise can help our audience of readers.
Long known as the go-to management consultant of the design world, Keith Granet reveals more of his clear-eyed insights about running a creative business in this follow-up to his book The Business of Design. While aimed at creative enterprises, Granet's advice, quickly summarized as "know what you do best and focus on that," applies to any organization, small or large, commercial or nonprofit. He delves into the skill sets and people needed to grow a business, as well as the things you don't need (bad clients, bad employees, negative energy), in an engaging and easy-to-implement manner. His shrewd understanding, gleaned from decades of consulting for brands like Harrods, Pantone, John Varvatos, and Urban Archeology, makes this essential reading for anyone managing a business or thinking of starting one.
The 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.
When BIC, manufacturer of disposable ballpoint pens, wanted to grow, it looked for an idea beyond introducing new sizes and ink colors. Someone suggested lighters. LIGHTERS? With an idea that seemed crazy at first, that bright executive, instead of seeing BIC as a pen company—a business in the PEN “box”—figured out that there was growth to be found in the DISPOSABLE “box.” And he was right. Now there are disposable BIC lighters, razors, even phones. The company opened its door to a host of opportunities. IT INVENTED A NEW BOX. Your business can, too. And simply thinking “out of the box” is not the answer. True ingenuity needs structure, hard analysis, and bold brainstorming. It needs to start THINKING IN NEW BOXES —a revolutionary process for sustainable creativity from two strategic innovation experts from The Boston Consulting Group (BCG). To make sense of the world, we all rely on assumptions, on models—on what Luc de Brabandere and Alan Iny call “boxes.” If we are unaware of our boxes, they can blind us to risks and opportunities. This innovative book challenges everything you thought you knew about business creativity by breaking creativity down into five steps: • Doubt everything. Challenge your current perspectives. • Probe the possible. Explore options around you. • Diverge. Generate many new and exciting ideas, even if they seem absurd. • Converge. Evaluate and select the ideas that will drive breakthrough results. • Reevaluate. Relentlessly. No idea is a good idea forever. And did we mention Reevaluate? Relentlessly. Creativity is paramount if you are to thrive in a time of accelerating change. Replete with practical and potent creativity tools, and featuring fascinating case studies from BIC to Ford to Trader Joe’s, Thinking in New Boxes will help you and your company overcome missed opportunities and stay ahead of the curve. This book isn’t a simpleminded checklist. This is Thinking in New Boxes. And it will be fun. (We promise.) Praise for Thinking in New Boxes “Excellent . . . While focusing on business creativity, the principles in this book apply anywhere change is needed and will be of interest to anyone seeking to reinvent herself.”—Blogcritics “Thinking in New Boxes is a five-step guide that leverages the authors’ deep understanding of human nature to enable readers to overcome their limitations and both imagine and create their own futures. This book is a must-read for people living and working in today’s competitive environment.”—Ray O. Johnson, Ph.D., chief technology officer, Lockheed Martin “Thinking In New Boxes discusses what I believe to be one of the fundamental shifts all companies/brands need to be thinking about: how to think creatively, in order to innovate and differentiate our brands. We need to thrive and lead in a world of accelerating change and this book challenges us to even greater creativity in our thinking. One of the best business books I’ve read in a long time.”—Jennifer Fox, CEO, Fairmont Hotels & Resorts “As impressive as teaching new tricks to old dogs, Thinking in New Boxes is both inspirational and practical—a comprehensive, step-by-step guide to sharpening one’s wits in order to harness creativity in the workplace.”—Peter Gelb, general manager, Metropolitan Opera
____________________________ We can all be more creative. John Cleese shows us how. Creativity is usually regarded as a mysterious, rare gift that only a few possess. John Cleese begs to differ, and in this short, immensely practical and often very amusing guide he shows it's a skill that anyone can acquire. Drawing on his lifelong experience as a writer, he shares his insights into the nature of the creative process, and offers advice on how to get your own inventive juices flowing. ____________________________ 'Humorous and practical ... Whether you're hoping to write a novel or paint a masterpiece, you're sure to feel inspired' OK Magazine 'His candor is endearing ... An upbeat guide to the creative process' Kirkus 'A jovial romp ... Cleese fans will enjoy, and writers and other artists will breeze through, picking up a few nuggets of wisdom along the way' The Festival Review 'A sincere and thoughtful guide to creativity, and a very useful book' Graham Norton 'Wise words on the serious business of being silly' Sunday Business Post
Business Creativity and Innovation: Perspectives and Best Practices provides a foundation in the principles of innovation and introduces some cutting-edge concepts. The core of the book demonstrates how to generate, evaluate, and design ideas to solve business problems. Over the course of eight chapters, the anthology delivers insightful articles carefully selected from leading authors such as Clayton Christensen, Robert Cooper, Ram Charan, and Vijay Govindarajan, as well as award-winning case studies on how prominent businesses, including Apple and Google, have leveraged innovation. Readers explore insightful articles about driving business growth through innovation, creating a culture of innovation, identifying customer needs, and using innovation to solve customer problems. Additional readings examine idea evaluation, how to design new products and services to meet customer's needs, and the implementation of innovation processes and practices. Business Creativity and Innovation is ideal for undergraduate and graduate courses in business innovation, product development, strategic management, business leadership, entrepreneurship, design thinking, marketing strategy, and decision making. The book can also serve as an enlightening manual for businesses and corporations, as it provides a framework for managing the innovation process from which organizations of any size can benefit. A former business innovation executive for Fortune 100 companies like AT&T and Bank of America, Len Ferman earned his M.B.A. from Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, M.A. in economics from Duke University, and B.S. in economics from Lehigh University. He is an adjunct professor of management at the University of North Florida, where he teaches courses he developed on business innovation, and is a faculty member of the American Management Association. He is the founder and managing director of Ferman Innovation and a frequent speaker on business innovation.
This book enables readers to develop their own creative thinking and their teams' creative problem-solving skills to generate novel, useful and surprising ideas. The vast majority of companies believe that a culture of innovation and renewal impacts performance and ultimately business results. In contrast, many managers feel ill-equipped to promote a culture of creative endeavour for this type of work-environment and lack the know-how to put it into practice. This book covers theory, practice, and impact metrics of both convergent and divergent thinking tools and provide managers with the ideas, tools and guidance to develop a corporate culture conducive to intrapreneurial thinking, idea creation and testing and moving inventions from ideas to viable business concepts, products and profitable innovations. This book includes numerous step-by-step tutorials to help the reader to learn concepts quickly.
Are you hungry to increase productivity in your workplace? Do you want to solve problems and enhance working relationships? A creative director with more than 25 years' experience, Patrick Collister introduces new ways to get the creative juices flowing. Whatever your career, how to: use innovation and creativity in the workplace is packed with simple and practical techniques that are easy to introduce into the working day. Find out how to encourage the exchange of ideas with colleagues and make meaningful and positive changes. Use technology and digital platforms, break established work patterns and engineer working environments to harness creative potential and increase innovation.
The Business of Design debunks the myth that business sense and creative talent are mutually exclusive, showing design professionals that they can pursue their passion and turn a profit. For nearly thirty years, consultant Keith Granet has helped designers create successful businesses, from branding to billing and everything in between. Unlike other business books, The Business of Design is written and illustrated to speak to a visually thinking audience. The book covers all aspects of running a successful design business, including human resources, client management, product development, marketing, and licensing. This timely update on the tenth anniversary of the first edition includes new content on social media, working from home, and understanding and working with different generations, essential tools in today's ultracompetitive marketplace.
