Why isn’t everyone creative? Why doesn’t education foster more ingenuity? Why is expertise often the enemy of innovation? Bestselling creativity expert Michael Michalko shows that in every ?eld of endeavor — from business and science to government, the arts, and even day-to-day life — natural creativity is limited by the prejudices of logic and the structures of accepted categories and concepts. Through step-by-step exercises, illustrated strategies, and inspiring real-world examples, he shows readers how to liberate their thinking and literally expand their imaginations by learning to synthesize dissimilar subjects, think paradoxically, and enlist the help of the subconscious mind. He also reveals the attitudes and approaches that diverse geniuses share — and anyone can emulate. Fascinating and fun, Michalko’s strategies facilitate the kind of lightbulb-moment thinking that changes lives — for the better.
How to Have Great Ideas is the essential guide for students and young professionals looking to embrace creative thinking in design, advertising and communications. It provides 53 practical strategies for unlocking innovative ideas. Strategies include improvisation techniques, changing the scenery, finding hidden links, looking to nature for inspiration, combining unusual systems, challenging set boundaries and many more. Each strategy is packed with great examples of successful contemporary and historical designs – from a designer dress made out of an old typewriter to ticket machines powered by recycled bottles in China, via the reimagining of famous brand logos and mis-use of photocopiers. Packed with practical projects to kick-start inventive thought in idea-blocked moments, this book explores creative thinking across all visual arts disciplines.
A scuba diving company faces bankruptcy because sharks have infested the area. Solution? Open the world's first extreme diving school. The Art of Creative Thinking reveals how we can transform ourselves, our businesses and our society through a deeper understanding of human creativity. Rod Judkins, of the world-famous St Martin's College of Art, has studied successful creative thinkers from every walk of life, throughout history. Drawing on an extraordinary range of reference points - from the Dada Manifesto to Nobel Prize Winning economists, from Andy Warhol's studio to Einstein's desk - he distils a lifetime's expertise into a succinct, surprising book that will inspire you to think more confidently and creatively. You'll realise why you should be happy when your train is cancelled; meet the most successful class in educational history (in which every single student won a Nobel prize); discover why graphic nudity during public speaking can be both a hindrance and surprisingly persuasive; and learn why, in the twenty-first century, it's technically illegal to be as good as Michelangelo. Be stubborn about compromise. Plan to have more accidents. Be mature enough to be childish. Contradict yourself more often. Discover the Art of Creative Thinking. *From the publishers of the international bestseller The Art of Thinking Clearly*
From the bestselling author of Thinkertoys, this follow up brings innovative creative thinking techniques within reach, giving you the tools to tackle everyday challenges in new ways. Internationally renowned business creativity expert, Michael Michalko will show you how creative people think—and how to put their secrets to work for you in business and in your personal life. You don't have to be a genius to solve problems like one. Michalko researched and analyzed hundreds of history's greatest thinkers across disciplines—from Leonardo da Vinci to Pablo Picasso—to bring the best of their techniques together and to teach you how to apply them in your own life. Cracking Creativity is filled with exercises and anecdotes that will soon have you looking at problems and seeing many different solutions.
This book combines the wonder and awe of human creativity with the complexity of its study. The authors advance the?biopsychosocial' perspective as a model of the creative process. ... This new perspective promises to further our understanding of the?intricacies of the creative mind.' In the process of studying this book, readers may increase the probability of enhancing their own creativity.
IDEO founder and Stanford d.school creator David Kelley and his brother Tom Kelley, IDEO partner and the author of the bestselling The Art of Innovation, have written a powerful and compelling book on unleashing the creativity that lies within each and every one of us. Too often, companies and individuals assume that creativity and innovation are the domain of the "creative types." But two of the leading experts in innovation, design, and creativity on the planet show us that each and every one of us is creative. In an incredibly entertaining and inspiring narrative that draws on countless stories from their work at IDEO, the Stanford d.school, and with many of the world's top companies, David and Tom Kelley identify the principles and strategies that will allow us to tap into our creative potential in our work lives, and in our personal lives, and allow us to innovate in terms of how we approach and solve problems. It is a book that will help each of us be more productive and successful in our lives and in our careers.
Discover the cognitive tools that lead to creative thinking and problem-solving with this “well-written and easy-to-follow” guide (Library Journal). Explore the “thinking tools” of extraordinary people, from Albert Einstein and Jane Goodall to Mozart and Virginia Woolf, and learn how you can practice the same imaginative skills to become your creative best. With engaging narratives and examples, Robert and Michèle Root-Bernstein investigate cognitive tools such as observing, recognizing patterns, modeling, playing, and more. Sparks of Genius is “a clever, detailed and demanding fitness program for the creative mind” and a groundbreaking guidebook for anyone interested in imaginative thinking, lifelong learning, and transdisciplinary education (Kirkus Reviews). “How different the painter at the easel and the physicist in the laboratory! Yet the Root-Bernsteins recognize the deep-down similarity of all creative thinking, whether in art or science. They demonstrate this similarity by comparing the accounts that various pioneers and inventors have left of their own creative processes: for Picasso just as for Einstein, for Klee just as for Feynman, the creative impulse always begins in vision, in emotion, in intuition. . . . With a lavishly illustrated chapter devoted to each tool, readers quickly realize just how far the imagination can stretch.” —Booklist “A powerful book . . . Sparks of Genius presents radically different ways of approaching problems.” —American Scientist
Based on over fifteen years of groundbreaking research, Developing Creative Thinking Skills helps learners demonstrably increase their own creative thinking skills. Focusing on divergent thinking, twelve inventive chapters build one’s capacity to generate a wide range of ideas, both as an individual and as a collaborator. This innovative textbook outlines a semester-long structure for the development of creative thinking skills and can easily be utilized as a self-directed format for those learning outside of a classroom. Readers are stimulated to maximize their own creativity through active exercises, challenges to personal limits and assumptions, and ideas that can help create powerful habits of variance.
WINNER OF THE PORCHLIGHT BUSINESS BOOK AWARD • “A delightful, compelling book that offers a dazzling array of practical, thoughtful exercises designed to spark creativity, help solve problems, foster connection, and make our lives better.”—Gretchen Rubin, New York Times bestselling author and host of the Happier podcast In an era of ambiguous, messy problems—as well as extraordinary opportunities for positive change—it’s vital to have both an inquisitive mind and the ability to act with intention. Creative Acts for Curious People is filled with ways to build those skills with resilience, care, and confidence. At Stanford University’s world-renowned Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, aka “the d.school,” students and faculty, experts and seekers bring together diverse perspectives to tackle ambitious projects; this book contains the experiences designed to help them do it. A provocative and highly visual companion, it’s a definitive resource for people who aim to draw on their curiosity and creativity in the face of uncertainty. Teeming with ideas about discovery, learning, and leading the way through unknown creative territory, Creative Acts for Curious People includes memorable stories and more than eighty innovative exercises. Curated by executive director Sarah Stein Greenberg, after being honed in the classrooms of the d.school, these exercises originated in some of the world’s most inventive and unconventional minds, including those of d.school and IDEO founder David M. Kelley, ReadyMade magazine founder Grace Hawthorne, innovative choreographer Aleta Hayes, Google chief innovation evangelist Frederik G. Pferdt, and many more. To bring fresh approaches to any challenge–world changing or close to home–you can draw on exercises such as Expert Eyes to hone observation skills, How to Talk to Strangers to foster understanding, and Designing Tools for Teams to build creative leadership. The activities are at once lighthearted, surprising, tough, and impactful–and reveal how the hidden dynamics of design can drive more vibrant ways of making, feeling, exploring, experimenting, and collaborating at work and in life. This book will help you develop the behaviors and deepen the mindsets that can turn your curiosity into ideas, and your ideas into action.
