Cover Image: Creative Acts for Curious People

Creative Acts for Curious People

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Member Reviews

Interesting book about designs, stretching your creativity, and being aware of your inner critic. It's more like taking a course and offers assignments similar to what the author refers to as d.school. Uniquely presented with many assignments.

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To be honest, I felt this book was a little all over the place at first, but it found its stride. The principles are helpful for those of us that have to be creative even when feeling burnt out or uninspired. The design-school inspiration is definitely evident in the illustrations.

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to review a temporary digital ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

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This is a how-to manual, covering a wide variety topics that all fit under the heading of creativity. The activities are grouped in to categories, and could be used one of two ways: as a path to creativity within the category, or by jumping around from one topic to another as suits the needs of the reader. These activities are self-paced, and can be completed individually or in groups, it was authored by the executive director of Stanford's d.school, a program designed to help people find their own creativity. Think of this as a workbook or a manual, and use in whatever way you desire to help you unlock your creative potential.

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CREATIVE ACTS FOR CURIOUS PEOPLE is from Sarah Stein Greenberg, the executive director of the Stanford d.school. A key idea here is to practice "How to Think, Create, and Lead in Unconventional Ways." Greenberg provides a variety of activities, as she says, "loosely organized according to how we might introduce them to students." An early section encourages readers to see things in new ways – working on attentiveness and moving beyond the obvious, it contain exercises for shadowing, interview essentials, and mapping the design space. Subsequent sections deal with building trust while working with others, forming hypotheses, and generating ideas. She includes activities to make those thoughts more concrete and to "tell a compelling story," plus suggestions for soliciting feedback, reflection, and finding inspiration at a pace that works for you. The text itself "jumps around" with activities appearing in a slightly different order than shown in the table of contents – thus "stretching" the readers' brains before they even begin. I wish we had more time to encourage students and teachers to try more of the over 70 assignments – many of which are contributed or praised by business leaders and business professors.

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This book is fantastic - it takes learning and makes it fun! What an amazing opportunity to learn straight from the d.school at Stanford.

I love that this book provided illustrations, examples, and scenarios. This book will help you solve problems, think creatively, and design solutions in the face of uncertainty.

I really enjoyed it and would recommend!

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Really fun read for inspiration while stuck inside all the time! Would not have picked thi sup normaly but glad I had the chance to through netgalley. Thank you to the publisher for sharing this with me!

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Really good! I have to be creative all the time for school and work so this book was really helpful! Definitely recommend it even if you don't have to deal with creativity on your job.

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I found this an extremely interesting read and quite unique for the self-help genre, I'll definitely be putting some of the lessons into action in my daily life especially as we enter normal life again after lockdown. I would definitely recommend this book to my sister who struggles with anxiety as feel it gives you a really good understanding on how to improve your life in a proactive and attainable way.

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