Love the collection of articles. In this day and age, we need to explore creativity for ourselves, with our teams and within our organizations ways to think and act differently in order to innovate. Like the variety of angle on this very timely topic.

A readable collection of articles from HBR, mostly on how not to crush creativity in organizations. I thought Catmull's insight into the development of Pixar's culture was a fun read (although seemingly hard to duplicate). The two articles by Teresa Amablie I found the most interesting because they took a psychological and environmental approach to creativity and the factors that encourage or inhibit creative thinking. The time pressure insights were especially interesting. Both high or low time pressure can lead to creative thinking if people are in the right motivational mindset. And that motivation can be influenced by their bosses and the organization at larger. some business fluff but the good articles made this worth it.

This is a great book with several articles on creativity. It offers a vast history and even lessons on fostering your own creativity. It is targeted towards creativity in businesses and companies. It also shows when the article was first published, which I thought was great, and I like how it wasn't all just current articles. An in-depth resource on creativity.

If I am looking for a collection of the best articles on creativity, this book will be my go-to resource. It has the right combinations of theories and actionable insights anyone who wants to know the best thinking on the subject will appreciate.

Readers will learn from multiple views of business leaders, academic researchers, and many more. I’ve learned how Pixar foster creativity in its team, the research result on how to better nurture this in every company, how to bring the whole brain of your company to work, and many more.

Reading this book is a good investment of my time.

Those were 10 short bite sized articles to make you think about new strategies, processes and improvements that can be made in a company or team.
I especially enjoyed the article about Pixar. The articles also come with further reading recommendations.
I can recommend this to anyone who'd like to implement creative ways at work.

Creativity is any act, idea, or product that changes an existing domain, or that transforms an existing domain into a new one. What counts is whether the novelty he or she produces is accepted for inclusion in the domain or not. Creative people are unusually bright. They express unusual thoughts which are interesting and stimulating. Creative people experience the world in a novel and original way. These individuals have fresh perceptions, insightful judgements and may make important discoveries that only they know about.

What are the characteristics of creative people ?
-- Creative people have a great deal of energy, but they are also often quiet and at rest.
-- Creative people have a combination of playfulness and discipline, or responsibility and irresponsibility.
-- Creative people alternate between imagination and fantasy at one end, and rooted sense of reality at the other.
-- Creative individuals are also remarkably humble and proud at the same time.
-- Most creative persons are very passionate about their work, yet they can be extremely objective about it as well.
So, Can Everyone be Creative ? Yes, whether they realize it or not. A lot of people tend to think creativity is a binary - Either you have it, or you don't. But in reality, we do all have it. It's just a matter of how we interpret it. Creativity is something you practice, not just a talent you are born with.

As per one of the articles in this book by Tom & David Kelley - Most people are born creative. As children, we revel in imaginary play, ask outlandish questions, draw blobs and call them dinosaurs. But over time because of socialization and formal education, a lot of us start to stifle those impulses. We learn to be warier of judgement, more cautious , more analytical. The world seems to divide into “Creatives” and “non creatives” and too many people consciously or unconsciously resign themselves to the latter category.

People have the fear of being judged, fear of losing control, fear of taking that first step, and fear of the unknown mess that it might create. This article talks about strategies to overcome all these fears. The strategies are all about breaking down the problem into smaller pieces. For example if you fear snakes - then you can start with watching snakes from far and once you are comfortable with that you can go closer and start watching it and if you follow the same process then time will come when you will be able to hold it in your hand ! The key is to start with a small act and keep on expanding it as and whenever you are ready.

The book has one article by Terasa M. Amabile on how creativity gets killed in big or small organizations. Creativity is undermined everyday unintentionally in work environments that were established to maximize business imperatives such as coordination, productivity, and control. This article talks about how both the things - Creativity and Business imperatives can flourish together. The managers need to pay attention to employees’ expertise, creative thinking skills, and motivation. Out of these three, intrinsic motivation or passion for a certain kind of challenge is the most potent lever the managers can use to boost creativity.
Give Creative people control over every stage of idea development. and A creative idea must also be useful, appropriate and actionable. It should influence the business in a positive way.

In another article Ed Catmull, the co-founder of animation movie maker company Pixar , dissects the success of Pixar and says that Managers should know that everyone must have the freedom to communicate with anyone in the organization to solve the problems without having to go through the “proper” channel. It should be clear to them that the. Managers need to learn that they don’t always have to be the first to know about something going in their realm, and it’s OK to walk into a meeting and be surprised.

The author makes a very good observation about post mortems that were done at Pixar inc. He says that although people love post mortems they don’t like to do them. People in general would rather talk about what went right than what went wrong. They just want to move on to the next project. There are some simple techniques to overcome these problems. You can ask each group to list the top five things they would do again and the top five things they wouldn’t do. The balance between positive and negative helps make it a safer environment. It also provides a lot of data which can stimulate discussions and challenge assumptions arising from personal impressions.

The book has one interesting article on innovation by Dorothy Leonard and Susaan Straus where they say that If you want an innovative organization, you need to hire, work with, and promote people who make you uncomfortable. And, this was an eye opener, where they say don’t treat the people the way you want to be treated. tailor communications to the receiver instead of the sender. In a cognitively diverse environment, a message sent is not necessarily a message received. Some people respond well to facts, figures, and statistics. Others prefer anecdotes. Still others digest graphic presentations most easily. Information must be delivered in the preferred “language” of the recipient if it is to be received at all.

The book has many more articles which talk about innovation, strategies for encouraging curiosity, Practices that can help bring breakthrough ideas to fruition, How to work with creative people, how creativity can work under tight deadlines, then there is an article on how Creative Thinking can help create game changing strategies in businesses and the last one is how to build a culture of originality.

Finally, The articles contained in this book are good enough to get started and experiment with ideas provided in it. I liked this book.