Thinking For A Change

Skill #3: Discover the Joy of Creative Thinking

• “The joy is in creating, not maintaining.” – Vince Lombardi (97)
  
• “Originality is the art of concealing your source.” – Thomas Edison (98)
• “To stay ahead, you must have your next idea waiting in the wings.” – Rosabeth Moss Kanter (99)
• “The most valuable resource you bring to your work and to your firm is your creativity.” – Annette Moser-Wellman (99)
• “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” – Pablo Picasso (100)
• Characteristics that creative thinkers have in common: (1) They value ideas, (2) explore options, (3) embrace ambiguity, (4) celebrate the offbeat, (5) connect the unconnected, and (6) don’t fear failure. (101-104)
• “Highly creative people are dedicated to ideas. They don’t rely on their talent alone; they rely on their discipline. Their imagination is like a second skin. They know how to manipulate it to its fullest.” – Annette Moser-Wellman (101)
• “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” – Albert Einstein (101)
• Creative thinking works something like this: THINK > COLLECT > CREATE >CORRECT > CONNECT
• An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail. (104)
• “anxiety is the essential condition of intellectual and artistic creation.”(104)
• Sometimes creative thinking lies along the lines of invention, where you break new ground. Other times it moves along the lines of innovation, which helps you to do old things in a new way. (105)
• “You can’t use up creativity. The more you use it, the more you have. Sadly, too often creativity is smothered rather than nurtured. There has to be a climate in which new ways of thinking, perceiving, questioning are encouraged.” – Maya Angelou (107)
• If you cultivate creativity, you will become more attractive to other people, and they will be drawn to you. (107)
• “Creativity is the joy of not knowing it all.” Ernie Zelinski (108)
• Creativity is teachability. It’s seeing more solutions than problems. (108)
• The status quo and creativity are incompatible. (108)
• Wrong questions shit down the process of creative thinking. (111)
• “The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes  a creative mind to spot wrong questions. (111)
• Negative environments kill thousands of great ideas every minute. (112)
• A creative environment, on the other hand, becomes like a greenhouse where ideas are seeded, sprout up, and flourish. (112)
• A creative environment: (1) encourages creativity, (2) places a high value on trust among team members and individuality, (3) embraces those who are creative, (4) focuses on innovation, not just invention, (5) places a high value on options, (6) is willing to let people go outside the lines and (7) appreciates the power of a dream. (112-116)
• “Studies of creativity suggest that the biggest single variable of whether or not employees will be creative is whether they perceive they have permission.” – David Hills (112)
• Creativity always risks failure. That’s why trust is so important to creative people. (113)
• “Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work.” – Rita Mae Brown (113)
• Creative people say, “Give me a good idea and I’ll give you a better idea!” (114)
• Look at more stuff, and think about it harder… That’s the formula all of us can learn to embrace if we want to become more creative people.