Blackstone LaunchPad Entrepreneurship Book Collection: Creativity

Biomimicry explores how scientists are adapting nature's best ideas to solve tough 21st century problems Biomimicry is rapidly transforming life on earth. Biomimics study nature's most successful ideas over the past 3.5 million years, and adapt them for human use. The results are revolutionizing how materials are invented and how we compute, heal ourselves, repair the environment, and feed the world. Janine Benyus takes readers into the lab and in the field with maverick thinkers as they: discover miracle drugs by watching what chimps eat when they're sick; learn how to create by watching spiders weave fibers; harness energy by examining how a leaf converts sunlight into fuel in trillionths of a second; and many more examples. Composed of stories of vision and invention, personalities and pipe dreams, Biomimicry is must reading for anyone interested in the shape of our future.

Creativity is the fastest growing business in the world. Companies are hungry for people with ideas - and more and more of us want to make, buy, sell and share creative products. But how do you turn creativity into money? In this newly rewritten edition of his acclaimed book, leading creative expert John Howkins shows what creativity is, how it thrives and how it is changing in the digital age. His key rules for success include: Invent yourself. Be unique. Own your ideas. Understand copyright, patents and IP laws. Treat the virtual as real, and vice versa. Learn endlessly: borrow, reinvent and recycle. Know when to break the rules. Whether in film or fashion, software or stories, by turning ideas into assets anyone can make creativity pay.

Offering insights from the spheres of anthropology, psychology, education, design, and business, Creative Intelligence by Bruce Nussbaum, a leading thinker, commentator, and curator on the subjects of design, creativity, and innovation, is first book to identify and explore creative intelligence as a new form of cultural literacy and as a powerful method for problem-solving, driving innovation, and sparking start-up capitalism. Nussbaum investigates the ways in which individuals, corporations, and nations are boosting their creative intelligence -- CQ--and how that translates into their abilities to make new products and solve new problems. Ultimately, Creative Intelligence shows how to frame problems in new ways and devise solutions that are original and highly social.  Smart and eye opening, Creative Intelligence: Harnessing the Power to Create, Connect, and Inspire illustrates how to connect our creative output with a new type of economic system, Indie Capitalism, where creativity is the source of value, where entrepreneurs drive growth, and where social networks are the building blocks of the economy.

How does your company define creativity? Or doescreativity define your company? In this remarkable book, Jerry Hirshberg, founder and president of Nissan Design International (NDI), distills his experience as leader of the world's hotbed of automotive innovation and reveals his strategy for designing an organization around creativity. In The Creative Priority Hirshberg weaves together enlightening real-world anecdotes with the story of NDI's genesis to illustrate eleven interlocking strategies that came to define NDI's creative priority. Richly illustrated with NDI's elegant designs and sketched, The Creative Priority is at once a compelling narrative, a rich store of hands-on experience, and a grab bag of breakthrough insights that can help your business perform its most vital function.

A short but engaging exploration of our changing perception of creativity. Creativity was once seen as the mark of mad geniuses, troubled souls, and avant-garde eccentrics. Today, however, we expect to find the trait thriving in and around us. Why? In Creativity, Jan Løhmann Stephensen provides a historical and contemporary view of creativity and explains why it is not always the answer to every problem. From van Gogh to Springsteen, Løhmann Stephensen explores the creative process of artists in order to craft a new theory of creativity--marking it as a collective and dynamic process in flux, rather than a finished product with a set endpoint and sole creator.

Artists, musicians, actors, singers, designers and other creative individuals need to understand basic business concepts if they are to successfully pursue their chosen artistic profession. These skills have historically not been taught to creative students, which leaves them unprepared to make a living from their artistic efforts. Entrepreneurship for the Creative and Cultural Industries will teach the basics of business in a way that is relevant to the challenges of running a small business marketing a creative product. Whether it is understanding the basics of business language, appreciating the crucial importance of finance, or using social media marketing, this innovative textbook covers the entrepreneurial skills required to succeed in the creative sector. Including advice from artists who have turned their idea in to a profitable business and worksheets that can be combined into a simple business plan, Kolb helps non-business minded creatives to understand everything they need to succeed in the increasingly competitive creative economy. This textbook is essential reading for non-business students who are looking to understand the business side of the creative sector whilst its practical style will also suit recent graduates in these industries

The creative industries represent a vital, exciting and rapidly changing field of activity; one that is now recognised as a key growth sector in the knowledge-based economy. However, there is still a general lack of understanding of what is meant by the term 'creative industry', and thxe creative sector has not, to date, been the subject of concerted academic research. This book redresses the balance by providing valuable insights into the creative entrepreneurial process and platforming some of the key challenges yet to be addressed. A range of pertinent and diverse topics relating to creative entrepreneurship are dealt with, including the different quantitative and qualitative methodologies adopted by researchers in this field. In addition, the nature of creative entrepreneurship across different industry sub-sectors and in different economic and geographical contexts is examined.Illustrating the valuable economic and social contribution of the creative industries sector, Entrepreneurship in the Creative Industries aims to encourage policymakers, educators and trainers to continue to evaluate their critical role in the creative enterprise development process. Students and researchers in entrepreneurship and creative industries fields will also find the book to be an illuminating read.

Explaining Creativity is an accessible introduction to the latest scientific research on creativity. In the last 50 yearss, psychologists, anthropologists, and sociologists have increasingly studied creativity, and we now know more about creativity that at any point in history. ExplainingCreativity considers not only arts like painting and writing, but also science, stage performance, and business innovation. Until about a decade ago, creativity researchers tended to focus on highly valued activities like fine art painting and Nobel prize winning science. Sawyer brings thisresearch up to date by including movies, music videos, cartoons, videogames, hypertext fiction, and computer technology. For example, this is the first book on creativity to include studies of performance and improvisation. Sawyer draws on the latest research findings to show the importance ofcollaboration and context in all of these creative activities.Today's science of creativity is interdisciplinary; in addition to psychological studies of creativity, Explaining Creativity includes research by anthropologists on creativity in non-Western cultures, and research by sociologists about the situations, contexts, and networks of creative activity.Explaining Creativity brings these approaches together within the sociocultural approach to creativity pioneered by Howard Becker, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Howard Gardner. The sociocultural approach moves beyond the individual to consider the social and cultural contexts of creativity,emphasizing the role of collaboration and context in the creative process.

Creativity has long been thought to be an individual gift, best pursued alone; schools, organizations, and whole industries are built on this idea. But what if the most common beliefs about how creativity works are wrong? In this authoritative and fascinating new book, Keith Sawyer, a psychologist at Washington University, tears down some of the most popular myths about creativity and erects new principles in their place. He reveals that creativity is always collaborative-even when you're alone. (That "eureka" moment in the bathtub couldn't have come to Archimedes if he hadn't spent so many hours arguing and comparing notes with his fellow mathematicians and philosophers.) Sawyer draws on compelling stories of inventions and innovations: the inventors of the ATM, the mountain bike, and open source operating systems, among others, to demonstrate the freewheeling ways of true innovation. He shares the results of his own acclaimed research on jazz groups,theater ensembles, and conversation analysis, to show us how to be more creative in collaborative group settings, how to change organizational dynamics for the better, and how to tap into our own reserves of creativity.

Explores the American pervasiveness of hypomania, a genetically based, mild form of mania that endows certain people with high energy, creativity, and a propensity for risk-taking.

Innovating is for doers: you don't need to wait for an earth-shattering idea, but can build one with a hunch and scale it up to impact. Innovation is the subject of countless books and courses, but there's very little out there about how you actually innovate. Innovation and entrepreneurship are not one and the same, although aspiring innovators often think of them that way. They are told to get an idea and a team and to build a show-and-tell for potential investors. In Innovating, Luis Perez-Breva describes another approach--a doer's approach developed over a decade at MIT and internationally in workshops, classes, and companies. He shows that to start innovating it doesn't require an earth-shattering idea; all it takes is a hunch. Anyone can do it. By prototyping a problem and learning by being wrong, innovating can be scaled up to make an impact. As Perez-Breva demonstrates, "no thing is new" at the outset of what we only later celebrate as innovation. In Innovating, the process--illustrated by unique and dynamic artwork--is shown to be empirical, experimental, nonlinear, and incremental. You give your hunch the structure of a problem. Anything can be a part. Your innovating accrues other people's knowledge and skills. Perez-Breva describes how to create a kit for innovating, and outlines questions that will help you think in new ways. Finally, he shows how to systematize what you've learned: to advocate, communicate, scale up, manage innovating continuously, and document--"you need a notebook to converse with yourself," he advises. Everyone interested in innovating also needs to read this book.

A modern framework for practical innovation--from individual ideas to an innovative organisational culture Everyone says that innovation is important. The problem is that no one tells you how to be innovative. Innovation is a State of Mind sets out a step-by-step guide to creating innovative ideas and putting them into action. You'll learn how to generate more ideas with greater potential, how to grow and evaluate them, test their effectiveness and then implement the ones that are going to improve your business. Author James O'Loghlin has worked with over a thousand of Australia's best inventors and innovators in the eight years he hosted ABC-TV's The New Inventors. He studied what they do differently and how they are able to identify and take advantage of opportunities that the rest of us miss. Packed with engaging stories and a good dose of humour, this insightful guide helps you to make innovation a part of what you do every day. Change your thinking and identify overlooked opportunities Step around common roadblocks to innovation Generate better ideas, and find the ones that will improve your business Create a culture where innovation is part of everyone's job Harvest innovative ideas from the entire staff and find the ones that will make a difference Innovators see things differently. They solve problems that the rest of us can't, and create solutions to problems that we never noticed we had. Getting stuck in routine and procedure is the death knell for modern business. Most companies undervalue and underuse the creative potential of their people, because they underestimate the impact of continuous innovation. Innovation is a State of Mind shows you how to think like an innovator and create a culture of innovation, so you can stay out in front of the future of business.

'Lightning in a Bottle' is a simple seven-step system for creating ideas that work, a system that improves new product success rates from standard one in ten, to one in two or better.

This book will help entrepreneurs, (or those who love them), discover how to harness their ADHD for maximum creativity, focus, and productivity, while learning how to manage the downsides and eliminate obstacles, so that they can achieve even more success.

Drawing from interviews with dozens of mavericks such as contemporary artist Jeff Koons and biotech visionary Henri Termeer, the authors explore the exhilarating process of generating new ideas and bringing them successfully to fruition.

With Give and Take, Adam Grant not only introduced a landmark new paradigm for success but also established himself as one of his generation's most compelling and provocative thought leaders. In Originals he again addresses the challenge of improving the world, but now from the perspective of becoming original: choosing to champion novel ideas and values that go against the grain, battle conformity, and buck outdated traditions. How can we originate new ideas, policies, and practices without risking it all?   Using surprising studies and stories spanning business, politics, sports, and entertainment, Grant explores how to recognize a good idea, speak up without getting silenced, build a coalition of allies, choose the right time to act, and manage fear and doubt; how parents and teachers can nurture originality in children; and how leaders can build cultures that welcome dissent. Learn from an entrepreneur who pitches his start-ups by highlighting the reasons not to invest, a woman at Apple who challenged Steve Jobs from three levels below, an analyst who overturned the rule of secrecy at the CIA, a billionaire financial wizard who fires employees for failing to criticize him, and a TV executive who didn't even work in comedy but saved Seinfeld from the cutting-room floor. The payoff is a set of groundbreaking insights about rejecting conformity and improving the status quo.

How do you shift your music into a career?! Very simple. By reading this book. This book gives self releasing artists insights and advice on how to turn their part-time music career into a full time career. This book takes on various case studies from mainstream artists, personal observations, and research from other music business writers and simplifies these into basic instructions on how to do music for a full time. The goal of these books is to gain more knowledge, but eventually pursue what artists love to do, which is make MUSIC.

Six Thinking Hats offers a practical and uniquely positive approach to making decisions and exploring new ideas. Your success in business depends on how you think. "The main difficulty of thinking is confusion," writes Edward de Bono, long recognized as the foremost international authority on conceptual thinking and on the teaching of thinking as a skill. "We try to do too much at once. Emotions, information, logic, hope, and creativity all crowd in on us. It is like juggling with too many balls." The solution? De Bono unscrambles the thinking process with his "six thinking hats": WHITE HAT: neutral and objective, concerned with facts and figures RED HAT: the emotional view BLACK HAT: careful and cautious, the "devil's advocate" hat YELLOW HAT: sunny and positive GREEN HAT: associated with fertile growth, creativity, and new ideas BLUE HAT: cool, the color of the sky, above everything else-the organizing hat Through case studies and real-life examples, Dr. de Bono reveals the often surprising ways in which deliberate role playing can make you a better thinker.

Iyengar provides essential tools to spark creative thinking and help us make our most meaningful choices. She draws from recent advances in neuro- and cognitive sciences to give readers a set of practical steps for coming up with powerful new ideas. Think Bigger offers an innovative evidence-backed method for generating big ideas that Iyengar and her team of researchers developed and refined over the last decade.

The New York Times bestselling Freakonomics changed the way we see the world, exposing the hidden side of just about everything. Then came SuperFreakonomics, a documentary film, an award-winning podcast, and more. Now, with Think Like a Freak, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner have written their most revolutionary book yet. With their trademark blend of captivating storytelling and unconventional analysis, they take us inside their thought process and teach us all to think a bit more productively, more creatively, more rationally--to think, that is, like a Freak. Levitt and Dubner offer a blueprint for an entirely new way to solve problems, whether your interest lies in minor lifehacks or major global reforms. Some of the steps toward thinking like a Freak: First, put away your moral compass--because it's hard to see a problem clearly if you've already decided what to do about it. Learn to say "I don't know"--for until you can admit what you don't yet know, it's virtually impossible to learn what you need to. Think like a child--because you'll come up with better ideas and ask better questions. Take a master class in incentives--because for better or worse, incentives rule our world. Learn to persuade people who don't want to be persuaded--because being right is rarely enough to carry the day. Learn to appreciate the upside of quitting--because you can't solve tomorrow's problem if you aren't willing to abandon today's dud. Levitt and Dubner plainly see the world like no one else. Now you can too. Never before have such iconoclastic thinkers been so revealing--and so much fun to read.

Kahneman's work with Amos Tversky is the subject of Michael Lewis's The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds In the international bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, the renowned psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The impact of overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning our next vacation--each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems shape our judgments and decisions. Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives--and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble.

Contrary to popular wisdom, you don't have to be an ace electrician, a coding prodigy, or a mechanical master to come up with a game-changing invention! You just need curiosity, a strong desire to fix a problem that you see in the world, and the determination to see your ideas become reality--and this book, which will teach you everything you need to go from zero to inventor. Everyone wants to be the next Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, but there's never been a clear road map to becoming a wildly successful innovator--until now.

A breakthrough in management thinking, "weird ideas" can help every organization achieve a balance between sustaining performance and fostering new ideas. To succeed, you need to be both conventional and counterintuitive. Creativity, new ideas, innovation--in any age they are keys to success. Yet, as Stanford professor Robert Sutton explains, the standard rules of business behavior and management are precisely the opposite of what it takes to build an innovative company. We are told to hire people who will fit in; to train them extensively; and to work to instill a corporate culture in every employee. In fact, in order to foster creativity, we should hire misfits, goad them to fight, and pay them to defy convention and undermine the prevailing culture. Weird Ideas That Work codifies these and other proven counterintuitive ideas to help you turn your workplace from staid and safe to wild and woolly--and creative. In Weird Ideas That Work Sutton draws on extensive research in behavioral psychology to explain how innovation can be fostered in hiring, managing, and motivating people; building teams; making decisions; and interacting with outsiders. Weird Ideas That Work shows how some of the best teams and companies use these and other counterintuitive practices to crank out new ideas, and it demonstrates that every company can reap sales and profits from such creativity. Weird Ideas That Work is filled with examples, drawn from hi- and low-tech industries, manufacturing and services, information and products.

A fascinating deep dive on innovation from the New York Times bestselling author of How We Got To Now and Farsighted The printing press, the pencil, the flush toilet, the battery--these are all great ideas. But where do they come from? What kind of environment breeds them? What sparks the flash of brilliance? How do we generate the breakthrough technologies that push forward our lives, our society, our culture? Steven Johnson's answers are revelatory as he identifies the seven key patterns behind genuine innovation, and traces them across time and disciplines. From Darwin and Freud to the halls of Google and Apple, Johnson investigates the innovation hubs throughout modern time and pulls out the approaches and commonalities that seem to appear at moments of originality.

The future belongs to a different kind of person with a different kind of mind: artists, inventors, storytellers-creative and holistic "right-brain" thinkers whose abilities mark the fault line between who gets ahead and who doesn't. Drawing on research from around the world, Pink, outlines the six fundamentally human abilities that are absolute essentials for professional success and personal fulfillment--and reveals how to master them. A Whole New Mind takes readers to a daring new place, and a provocative and necessary new way of thinking about a future that's already here.

The goal of "Your Next Big Idea - Improve Your Creativity and Problem-Solving" is to help the reader develop innovative ideas. Whether those ideas are giant multi-million-dollar businesses or simply ways to improve everyday activities, this book describes a process that can be used to help the reader originate and cultivate ideas that can change their life. It is styled as an interactive workbook where the main character is the reader, with each section featuring exercises that will challenge the reader's perspective, improve creativity and help them become a better problem solver. The book is split up into six sections. The first section outlines how to notice problems, needs, wants and questions in our everyday world. The book then follows with a second section that examines how to erase stigmas or assumptions about these problems, needs, wants and questions. Following that, the book investigates how to create solutions to these problems, needs and wants using the skills learned from the first two sections. Next, the reader takes those solutions to section four where they do a feasibility check to see if the solutions and ideas are viable. Section five explains how and why the reader should share those ideas and solutions with others to receive feedback and improve upon them. By the end of the fifth section, each reader should understand the full creative idea innovation process. The final section builds off the process and explores the next steps to follow to implement these innovative ideas. Ultimately, "Your Next Big Idea - Improve Your Creativity and Problem-Solving" is essentially a complete program that guides the reader to come up with their own next big idea.