This week’s selection is “Cracking Creativity: The Secrets of Creative Genius” by Michael Michalko.
It’s sometimes said there are two types of people: creatives and executors, with each supplying the other with what they need to succeed. But for many people, the idea of creativity can be challenging.
How do you come up with new ideas, ideas that are worthwhile to pursue and provide benefit?
Some people come by this trait naturally, while others struggle with ideas and basically wait for others to provide them.
This book opens up the possibility of being more creative by using well-understood techniques that have evolved over centuries.
The author uses examples from multiple innovative historical figures to demonstrate different forms of creative work.
The book focuses on two dimensions of creativity: “Seeing What No One Else Is Seeing”, and “Thinking What No One Else Is Thinking”. These both hint at the real essence of creativity: figuring out something before anyone else does. It’s a matter of timing.
Sight is certainly one of the most inspirational methods of creative inspiration. While we often look at the world around us in familiar ways, it’s possible to adjust your approach and see things in a different way. Those views may inspire a new concept, and often do for myself.
Thinking, the other dimension of creativity described in the book, makes up the majority of the work. Several chapters explain different ways to think, which are all variations of doing the thinking in the opposite way that you normally perceive. For example, one chapter is about “Finding what you’re not looking for”, and another is “Connecting the Unconnected”.
We all have tons of data around us; it’s just that we need some techniques to combine them together to create innovation.
This book has the tools needed to do just that.
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Via Amazon
