Leapfrogging by
How did Gatorade revitalize itself in the wake of Red Bull and Starbucks? How did OpenTable come to be? What makes one company thrive while others languish in mediocrity? There's no doubt hard work is involved, but Soren Kaplan shows you can't do it by simply creating a big vision and implementing a set plan. In his trailblazing debut, Kaplan gives business leaders the tools to do exactly what they're taught to avoid- embrace surprise-the new key to business breakthroughs. Instead of fighting against uncertainty, Kaplan reveals how to use it to break down limiting mindsets and barriers to change the game. By highlighting specific ways to transform both good and bad surprises into unique opportunities, Kaplan encourages leaders to compete by embracing counterintuitive ideas, managing paradoxes, and even welcoming failure. This is the key to "leapfrogging"-creating or doing something radically new or different that produces a significant leap forward. Leapfroggingconnects new research, unconventional strategies, and practical tools for navigating the "messy" and elusive process of achieving business breakthroughs. Filled with real-world examples from innovators such as Gatorade, Intuit, Philips, Kimberly-Clark, Colgate-Palmolive, OpenTable, and Etsy, Kaplan shows that any organization or business function can leapfrog. Using his LEAPS process (Listen, Explore, Act, Persist, and Seize), leaders learn to seek out, recognize, and respond to surprising experiences and events as a way to create solutions that leap beyond the current expectations of customers, partners, employees, the market, and the competition. Kaplan's Leapfrogging is the new handbook for the modern leader.
Thinkertoys by
In hindsight, every great idea seems obvious. But how can you be the person who comes up with those ideas? In this revised and expanded edition of his groundbreaking THINKERTOYS, creativity expert Michael Michalko reveals life-changing tools that will help you think like a genius. From the linear to the intuitive, this comprehensive handbook details ingenious creative-thinking techniques for approaching problems in unconventional ways. Through fun and thought-provoking exercises, you'll learn how to create original ideas that will improve your personal life and your business life. Michalko's techniques show you how to look at the same information as everyone else and see something different. With hundreds of hints, tricks, tips, tales, and puzzles, THINKERTOYS will open your mind to a world of innovative solutions to everyday and not-so-everyday problems.
Individual Creativity in the Workplace by
Rapid technological change, global competition, and economic uncertainty have all contributed to organizations seeking to improve creativity and innovation. Researchers and businesses want to know what factors facilitate or inhibit creativity in a variety of organizational settings. Individual Creativity in the Workplace identifies those factors, including what motivational and cognitive factors influence individual creativity, as well as the contextual factors that impact creativity such as teams and leadership.The book takes research findings out of the lab and provides examples of these findings put to use in real world organizations.
Creativity 101, Second Edition by
What makes us creative? How can organizations, schools, or parents inspire people to be more creative? How do we even start to define the topic in thefirst place? Now in its second edition, this bestselling introductory text' written by one of the world' s leading experts on the psychology of creativity' iscompletely updated and expanded to reflect the tremendous growth in this field. In a restructured, reader-friendly format, the text surveys the latesttheories and research to provide key information about what we know (and don' t know) about creativity. It addresses how creativity operates both onindividual and on social/environmental levels, how it is defined and measured, and several hot debates in the field, such as creativity' s uncertainrelationship to mental illness. Grounded in psychological research from clinical, industrial, social, cognitive, evolutionary, and developmentalperspectives, this text also draws on classic and current findings from neuroscience, business, education, engineering, and biology. This much-praised book is an ideal brief and affordable text for courses on creativity in psychology, education, business, and other fields, as well ascross-disciplinary seminars and programs in creativity studies. New to the Second Edition: Completely updated and expanded with new theories and frameworks and including the latest research Restructured to enhance flow of information and ease of use New coverage of how creativity can be improved at the level of the individual and the environment, measuring creativity, and creativity across cultures
