Chapter Summaries

  • Yes, you really are creative, and the first step toward developing your leadership is to understand the many myths that surround the concept. Perhaps the greatest obstacle to your creativity is you—your fear of being different, your self-editing and self-censoring, and the mental habits formed over the years.
  • But, as a leader, you will have problems. Even if you don’t have problems, you want to proactively seek out problems, because those kinds of problems are heuristic opportunities to innovate. Creative leaders see more possibilities.
  • Creativity can be defined with 4 Ps. Creative products are unique and of value, and that uniqueness and value needs to be clearly defined. Creative persons think divergently, able to generate many, many ideas from a single problem. They are also open minded and have creative confidence. The creative press are the things in the environment that impact creativity. And, there are many creative processes, all of which offer some interesting divergent-convergent steps and stages, and all of which fall into the general organization of Understand-Imagine-Implement with iteration. But, the important thing (remember to identify the important thing) is to follow a process.
  • Yes, you can generate many ideas. Wow, can you generate ideas. There are so many idea-generating techniques to add to your creative problem-solving toolbox. Fortunately, your toolbox is organized by category of technique: divergent thinking techniques, problem analysis techniques, visualization techniques, play and build techniques, human-centered techniques, incubation techniques, alternative perspective techniques, and inspiration and exploration techniques.