Current Articles | RSS Feed RSS Feed

6 Creativity and Innovation Books for Your Office

  
  
  
Add to delicious   delicious  
  

In my experience, all ideas come from an emotion of creativity. Many ideas are easy to find.  However, the breakthrough ideas need staff that is challenged to solve the greatest problems Books in this category will help you identify the problem space as well as solution space by tapping into the hearts and minds of your people.              

 Managing Creativity and Innovation resized 600

Managing Creativity and Innovation (Harvard Business Essentials) 

Packed with practical information designed for business readers and managers at all levels, this essential volume offers insights on managing creativity in groups, developing creative conflict, and using technology to help foster innovation. 

 Think Better resized 600

Think Better: An Innovator's Guide to Productive Thinking by TimHurson  

There are thousands of books about thinking. But there are very few books that provide clear how-to information that can actually help you think better.

Think Better is about Productive Thinking - why it's important, how it works, and how to use it at work, at home, and at play. Productive Thinking is a game changer - a practical, easy-to-learn, repeatable process that helps people understand more clearly, think more creatively, and plan more effectively. It's based on the thinking strategies that people we celebrate for their creativity have been using for centuries. Tim Hurson brings Productive Thinking out of the closet and presents it in a way that makes it easy for anyone to grasp and use - so you can think better, work better, and do better in every aspect of your life.

Think Better demonstrates how you can start with an intractable technical problem, an unmet consumer need, or a gaping chasm in your business strategy and, by following a clearly defined, practical thinking process, arrive at a robust, innovative solution. Manycompanies use the Productive Thinking model to generate fresh solutions for tough business problems, and many individuals rely on it to solve pressing personal problems. 

 Creativity and Innovation blog resized 600

Creativity and Innovation in Organizational Teams Organization and Management   by Hoon-Seok Choi Leigh L. Thompson 

Creativity and Innovation in Organizational Teams stemmed from a conference held at the Kellogg School of Management in June 2003 covering creativity and innovation in groups and organizations. Each chapter of the book is written by an expert and covers original theory about creative processes in organizations. The organization of the text reflects a longstanding notion that creativity in the world of work is a joint outcome of three interdependent forces--individual thinking, group processes, and organizational environment.

Part I explores basic cognitive mechanisms that underlie creative thinking, and includes chapters that discuss cognitive foundations of creativity, a cognitive network model of creativity that explains how and why creative solutions form in the human mind, and imports a ground-breaking concept of "creativity templates" to the study of creative idea generation in negotiation context. The second part is devoted to understanding how groups and teams in organizational settings produce creative ideas and implement innovations. Finally, Part III contains three chapters that discuss the role of social, organizational context in which creative endeavors take place.

The book has a strong international mix of scholarship and includes clear business implications based on scientific research. It weds the disciplines of psychology, cognition, and business theory into one text. 

 The Ten Faces of Innovation blog resized 600

The Ten Faces of Innovation: IDEO's Strategies for Defeating the Devil's Advocate and Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization by Thomas Kelley and Jonathan Littman 

The author of the bestselling The Art of Innovation reveals the strategies IDEO, the world-famous design firm, uses to foster innovative thinking throughout an organization and overcome the naysayers who stifle creativity. 

The role of the devil's advocate is nearly universal in business today. It allows individuals to step outside themselves and raise questions and concerns that effectively kill new projects and ideas, while claiming no personal responsibility. Nothing is more potent in stifling innovation.

 Leadership for Innovation blog resized 600

Leadership for Innovation: How to Organize Team Creativity and Harvest Ideas by John Eric Adair 

New ideas and new ways of doing things are one of the main ingredients in sustained business success, but how does one create the right conditions for innovation?

Leadership for Innovation will help readers create an innovative climate that encourages the development of new products and services. Drawing upon real-life examples including Google, Honda and 3M, John Adair sets out practical ways for bringing about change in organizations. As well as identifying the characteristics of an innovative organization, he discusses key topics such as organizing for team creativity; motivating creative people, how to build on ideas and how to be a creative leader and team member.

Leadership for Innovation shows how to inspire teams to go one step further and generate the kind of ideas that are the foundations of future success.

 CATS blog resized 600

CATS: The Nine Lives of Innovation by Stephen C. Lundin

It's time to let the CATS out of the bag . . .

Curiosity might have killed the proverbial cat, but without it very real achievements would never occur. With this book as your guide, you'll learn how to spark your innate curiosity, pounce on problems in ways you never imagined, and enjoy greater success and satisfaction at work-and in your personal life.

Playful, profound, and positively upbeat, CATS provides what you need to tap into your power of innovation-and then unleash it in every member of your organization. While most business thinkers view this challenge from the top down, Stephen Lundin sees the subject from a CAT's-eye view, explaining how to get every employee--no matter what level--to think and act in innovative ways. Inside, he examines the four challenges to innovation and offers practical measures aimed at conquering them. 

The Takeaway

Challenge your staff to think creatively about customer needs in new and unique ways.

Your Turn.  Please comment below.

  1. What creativity and innovation books would you add to the list?
  2. Which of the books on the list did you enjoy the most?
  3. If only one book could be written on Creativity and Innovation what should its focus  be?

 

You can download FREE articles at www.desai.com/resources.

Tags: , ,

COMMENTS

Though this could be read as being an exercise in self promotion, it is definitely not to be such.  
 
However, for those passionate about innovation and innovators, they may be interested to read Innovation: How Innovators Think, Act and Change Our World. 
 
The three core axioms of the book are: 1) innovation drives change - cultural, societal and economic; 2) innovation, in some form, touches each and every one of us, wherever we may be, as individuals, 
communities and societies as a whole; and 3) innovators deserve recognition, celebration and applause." The !nnovation project is the embodiment of my hands clapping. 
 
It celebrates game changers who've broken the mould in a wide range of fields including business, tech, government and social policy, the arts and advertising, media, medicine and more.  I was fortunate enough to interview over 100 international innovators, business and thought leaders and shall be ever grateful that they shared their wit and wisdom, insights and expertise in the project. Their contributions have, no doubt, a massive amount to do with the excellent reviews the book has received.  
 
"It is not often that a book appears which reaches across so many frontiers of experience and expertise as it extends an inter-generational bridge between such a wide range of ideas, inspirations and innovational thinking.  I would suggest this book be core reference reading for any student of innovation and entrepreneurship - whether they are leading up to university study, in a graduate program, or partaking in the university of life." - Sandy Carter, IBM General Manager and Social Business Evangelist

posted @ Tuesday, December 31, 2013 8:49 PM by Kim Chandler McDonald


KIm: 
 
Thanks for reading the post. There is an earlier one in the series about other books. We have several more planned as well. We are always looking for cool topics to write about. Haven't been to Oz in years. Hope you are enjoying summer. We are do for a winter storm in the next couple of hours. 
 
Rob

posted @ Wednesday, January 01, 2014 6:11 PM by Rob Berman


Interesting comments.With weather,business,society becoming unpredictable,only stable platform to grow is innovative mindset.

posted @ Friday, February 28, 2014 9:52 AM by Suresh Ogale


Comments have been closed for this article.