Creativity
60 Minutes to Super‑Creativity by Tony Buzan
Start using the other 99 percent of your brain. Step‑by‑step exercises help you eliminate traditional, rigid patterns of thinking, learning, and communicating. As you link the logical powers of your left brain with the creative powers of your right brain, you’ll think, learn, memorize, and create with new vitality and efficiency. Buzan’s methods have been used successfully by business executives, students, educators, and governments around the world; they can work for you, too. The 60‑minute audio comes with a 32‑page Guidebook to Super‑Creativity. Audiotape.
101 Creative Problem Solving Techniques: The Handbook of New Ideas for Business by James Higgins
This veritable yellow pages of individual and group creative problem solving strategies includes such well-known techniques as brainstorming, mind mapping, storyboarding, brainwriting, and synectics… as well as dozens more that you’ve never heard of. Attractively designed with illustrations throughout, this book empowers you to innovate (rather than evaporate) in your organization. Valerie Oberle (V.P. for Disney University) applauds: “You’ll find Higgins’ book engaging, easy to read, and very practical.”
Applied Imagination: Principles and Procedures of Creative Problem Solving by Alex Osborn
This is the third revised edition of the classic text in the filed of creative problem solving. This “creativity bible” contains over 400 pages of creativity exercises, questions, references, and observations on the importance of and how to tap your creative imagination. .Osborn covers such areas as: individual ideation, creative collaboration by groups, creativity in careers and leadership and skills you can teach others.
Art and Soul: 156 Ways to Free Your Creative Spirit by Pam Grout
Most books tell you how to get something— a sizzling sex life, thinner thighs, a higher return on your investment dollar. Art and Soul is a book that tells you how to give, how to reach deep inside yourself and pull out the artistic blessing that is yours to give. This book is an apprenticeship, an actual year-long journey into your creative soul. Each of the 52 weeks has an inspirational message, a creative project, and three or four more offbeat, original “fun stuff” activities to engage you in a brain workout to help you discover the artist within. This book practices what it teaches— the medium and message creatively go heart-in-soul. This is a great gift book— for yourself or someone you care about.
The Big Book of Creativity Games: Quick, Fun Activities for Jumpstarting Innovation by Robert Epstein
Did you know that group creativity techniques like brainstorming can actually inhibit creativity… that failure spurs creativity better than success does… that creativity is not an exclusively right-brained activity? For work groups and individuals who do creative work, here is a light-hearted book of games based on rigorous creativity research, not just hype. Written by the Editor-in-Chief of Psychology Today, all the exercises in this collection are based on groundbreaking scientific research on the nature of the creative process. The book includes dozens of fast, simple games that foster and encourage creativity in the workplace and at home. The creativity games help to: boost workplace creativity by a factor of ten or more, convince people that they are creative, get a new project off the ground, perk up a meeting, overcome a creative “block”, develop the 12 creativity competencies.
The Creative Problem Solver’s Toolbox: A Complete Course in the Art of Creating Solutions to Problems of Any Kind by Richard Fobes
Whether you’re facing business challenges, raising children, inventing, looking for employment, teaching, wanting to improve a relationship, or figuring out how to solve global problems, the 65 learnable thinking skills revealed in this book are the ones you need. More than 200 examples illustrate how to apply these skills to real-life situations. This is one set of tools that won’t sit around your home or office unused.
The Creative Spirit
This fascinating 4-hour PBS series is the best we’ve ever seen on creativity. It blends animation, cartoons, humorous celebrity sketches, original music, and on‑location shooting to capture the spirit of creativity and reveal that it belongs to everyone, not just “geniuses.” Part 1: Inside Creativity explores the nature and causes of creativity. Part 2: Creative Beginnings looks at how adult creativity is formed by our childhood experiences, examines new teaching techniques that encourage creativity, and explores creativity in the home. Part 3: The Creative Spirit at Work visits innovative companies around the world. Part 4: The Creative Community reveals that creative approaches to difficult issues can and do make a difference. “Engaging and provoking.”‑‑ New York Times.
Drawing On The Right Side Of The Brain by Betty Edwards
This is the most widely-used and highly-praised drawing instruction book in the world. In this new, expanded version of her original classic, Dr. Edwards teaches a set of basic exercises to tap the special abilities of the visual, perceptual right hemisphere of the brain. Many new exercises are clearly presented for you to work through on your own. This book will help you (literally and figuratively) to draw on your own creative potential.
Dumbth: and 81 Ways to Make Americans Smarter by Steve Allen
This “ultimate how-to book” addresses the inefficiency , poor service, and muddleheadedness (“dumbth”) that increasingly pervades many segments of society. As an antidote, Allen suggests we add Reasoning to the traditional 3 R’, then offers entertaining anecdotes and 81 creative “rules” to stimulate thinking and commonsense self-improvement. This 350+ page book will definitely give you a lot of food-for-thought-and-creativity.
Empowerment; The Art Of Creating Your Life As You Want It by David Gershon and Gail Straub
You are about to take a journey into the most beautiful, miraculous, wondrous, exciting frontier in the universe– you are about to discover yourself! This book will also help you to discover practical skills, guidelines, and activities you can use to dream boldly and act impactfully to make your passion happen. You’ll also see that personal fulfillment and global consciousness can go hand-in-hand.
Expect the Unexpected or You Won’t Find It: A Creativity Tool Based on the Ancient Wisdom of Heraclitus by Roger von Oech
Here is a great sequel to Roger’s creativity classic, A Whack on the Side of the Head. Open your mind with innovation strategies that are as relevant and powerful today as they were 2500 years ago when provocative Heraclitus cooked them up. A former keynote speaker at our conference and world leader in creativity, Roger breathes fresh life into such creativity tools as: appreciating turbulence, practicing forgetting, asking a fool, seeing the obvious, connecting the unconnected, using what’s not there, and reversing assumptions. Whether you read it start-to-finish as a creativity workbook or consult it as a daily oracle, expect to find in this book a welcome jolt to your imagination.
Explorabook: A Kid’s Science Museum In A Book by John Cassidy
Full of over 50 fun and funny experiments and activities, here’s a one‑inch thick interactive museum that children will love! Including demonstrations of magnetism, bending and bouncing of light waves, optical illusions, and much more, this hands-on-museum-in-a-book has been widely acclaimed by sources such as Scientific American, The Washington Post, and Publishers Weekly. The kids will have so much fun they won’t even know that they’re learning!
Five Star Mind: Games & Puzzles to Stimulate Your Creativity & Imagination by Tom Wujec
Creativity is a familiar stranger. You’ll have a chance to meet and greet (your own) creativity through this attractive and inviting book. Using dozens of games, puzzles, tips, thought association, relaxation techniques, and brainteasers, Tom provides you with lots of food for thought (and action). By practicing the skills used in this book, you will learn to unlock and expand your creative potential– and will start cooking up five-star ideas of your own! You’ll learn innumerable ways to apply your new ideas and creativity to work, to everyday life or to just having fun. Bon appetite!
Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI) Profile Package by Ned Herrmann
As the founder of Whole Brain Technology, Ned has been a pioneer in researching and developing the HBDI, an internationally-acclaimed and validated instrument. He has helped us to move from the simplistic left brain/right brain model to a metaphorical model that contains four distinct thinking/creating styles. This package provides incredible value as it guides you in understanding the implications of your personal thinking preferences. Once you have completed the HBDI survey form, you return it for processing. Then in about two weeks, you’ll receive a Personal Profile Package with your: individual Brain Dominance Profile; Personal Data Sheet describing specific survey scoring results; Personal Growth Booklet of strategies for development; HBDI Interpretation Guide; plus a 40-minute video tape on “Understanding Your HBDI Profile” with Ned Herrmann.
If It Ain’t Broke… Break It! And Other Unconventional Wisdom for a Changing Business World by Robert Kriegel and Louis Patter
A worldwide authority in the field of human performance challenges conventional thinking with astute and entertaining thrusts. This entertaining book reveals how “Break –It” Thinkers creativity have paved new paths for achieving their goals and dreams. It is filled with practical wisdom on how to put innovative energy and joy back into people and organizations. Donald Keough, CEO of Coca-Cola, says the book “challenges you to mess with success.”
Improvise This!: How to Think on Your Feet So You Don’t Fall on Your Face by Mark Bergren, Molly Cox and Jim Detmar
Are you surprised to learn that the most successful people have learned a lot from the world of improvisation? Lightning-quick responses, keen powers of observation and confidence are qualities that can help anyone go far. This unique guide, written by a trio of professional improv trainers and performers teaches you spontaneous combustion skills (igniting your creative spark) and foolproof ways to improvise your way out of any situation. Filled with amusing anecdotes, sound advice, easy exercise and true-to-life practice scenarios, this is an invaluable resource for you to improve with improve. Go out on a whim and buy this book.
Innovate or Evaporate: Test & Improve Your Organization’s I.Q. by James Higgins
What is your organization’s Innovation Quotient… and how can you increase it as we accelerate into the 21st century? Using succinct case studies of successful companies, this book richly illustrates 49 characteristics that an organization’s culture needs to possess to achieve strategic advantage through innovation. You’ll also find questionnaires to measure your organization’s I.Q. relative to four kinds of innovation: process, product, marketing, and management. You have a high I.Q. if you buy this book!
Innovation, Inc: Unlocking Creativity in the Workplace by Stephen Grossman, Bruce Rodgers, and Beverly Moore
This practical how‑to guide can help unlock individual creativity and encourage corporate innovation. You’ll increase your ability to come up with new ideas by learning the four basic skills of creativity, fool-proof innovation implementation techniques, and even a process to solve “impossible problems.” With this book, you can turn problems into profitable opportunities.
Jump Start Your Brain by Doug Hall with David Wecker
Jump start your spirit, energy, and sense of adventure and fun. Fun fuels your brain. You can increase your brainpower simply by laughing and having fun. This book shows you how! Doug Hall’s Eureka! Stimulus Response method increases creativity up to 500% and is based on the proven, powerful, practical advice he uses in his renowned seminars for major Fortune 500 companies. His counter-corporate culture approach to creativity invites you to have fun as you: explore your personal BOS (Brain Operating System), learn 37 proven tools to get your cranium flowing with new feats and toes of imagination, and creatively turn your dreams into reality with the Eureka! Ten Commandments. This book will tickle your funny bone and your curiosity at the same time!
A Kick In The Seat Of The Pants by Roger von Oech
When was the last time you had a creative idea? This morning? Last month? Last year? Sometimes you need a boot in the buns to get your thinking going. This book does just that by taking you on a how-to guided tour through the four roles of the creative process: Explorer, Artist, Judge, and Warrior. Roger again provides exercises, stories, tips, and proven techniques to strengthen each of your own creative roles.
Leading on the Creative Edge: Gaining Competitive Advantage through the Power of Creative Problem Solving by Roger Firestien
Enlightening will strike you again and again in this electrifying book. Whether you lead a multi-million dollar corporation, help a volunteer group, coach Little League, teach in a classroom or work for a non-profit organization, this book provides you with vital insights on: how to develop a creativity-nurturing environment, how mistakes can actually help you become more creative, and cutting-edge research on creativity (what works, what doesn’t). Roger shows you how to nurture your own creativity while igniting the creative contributions of everyone in your organization. He provides examples of the extraordinary bottom-line results created by those who have chosen to lead on the creative edge.
Learning to Use What You Already Know by Stephen Stumpf & Joel DeLuca
Everyone experiences flashes of insight– those moments when an “aha!” reaction leaves us feeling enlightened and empowered. This “owner’s manual to your mind” will help you to be intentional about encouraging life-long learning, insight, and out-of-sight creativity. You’ll learn to improve your job performance and turn crises into opportunities. We think your curiosity and funnybone will be tickled by such chapters as “If You Get It Right the First Time, You Aren’t Risking Enough,” “Laughter Allows One to Suspend Judgment,” “Rules Are Tools Not to Be Placed in the Hands of Fools,” etc.
The Magic of Conflict: Turning a Life of Work into a Work of Art by Tom Crum
The co-founder (with John Denver) of the Windstar Foundation presents a practical stress-reduction strategy based on the Japanese martial art of aikido. The Aiki techniques are accompanied by evocative photos and real-life experiences that sow how to creatively turn conflicts into opportunities for choice and change.
The Magic of Your Mind by Sidney Parnes
Based on his programs with more than 100,000 people, Sid gives tricks-of-the-trade for: pushing beyond your present mental limits, discovering more opportunities in your day-to-day problems, stretching beyond conventional thinking, and balancing your imagination and judgment. This book is a wonderful balance between idea-rich text and fun-rich cartoons that illustrate the points being made.
Making the Point by Morris Stein
“In God we trust – All others must have data.” So states the epilogue to this fascinating collection. Dr. Stein provides a lot a data – anecdotes, poems, illustrations, and examples he has used to illustrate points he makes in presentations about the creative process. This is presented with the quotes on the left side of the page and a condensed version of his lecture material on the right side. This book makes lots of points that you can use, too!
Mapping Inner Space: Learning and Teaching Mind Mapping by Nancy Margulies
Tap the power of your whole brain with this breakthrough method for generating and recording ideas. Drawing on her work with major corporations and school districts, Nancy suggests applications of mind mapping for note-taking, curriculum planning, leading groups, teaching, and as a tool to illuminate new horizons of personal creativity, self-expression, and thinking.
Maps, Mindscapes, and More with Nancy Margulies
It’s easy to learn and teach mind mapping when you see it demonstrated and applied in this exciting 90-minute video. Watch a master mind mapper teach her techniques to children and adults in a live demonstration (with one section especially for classroom application). The techniques shown here will take you beyond all other books on mind mapping and include the newly developed Mindscape technique, which is an exciting extension of Tony Buzan’s work.
The Mind Map by Michael Gelb and Nancy Margulies
This attractive and practical tool folds up like a road map. It focuses on advantages, guidelines, examples, and steps to mind mapping. A very handy item for each person in your group or team… especially if you want to think faster and more creatively, get more work done in less time, and run meetings and solve problems with ease. 6-fold unfolds to dimensions.
Quantum Creativity: Nine Principles to Transform the Way You Work by Pamela Myer
Creativity is the core competency in an age of accelerating change. Pulling from improvisational theater, quantum physics, and new management models, this top organizational consultant presents nine principles for connecting creativity and productivity. Filled with real-life examples, this thought-provoking book whacks your thinking and teaches you to improve communication, participation, morale, job satisfaction, collaboration, and employee retention and recruiting. You’ll learn to release creative passion in your workplace to help you energize and innovate in every aspect of your job by: tapping the power of intuition, turning inspiration into action, removing blocks to creativity, finding opportunities in obstacles, and much more.
Serious Creativity: Using the Power of Lateral Thinking to Create New Ideas by Edward de Bono
You don’t have to wait for creativity to “happen.” You can be creative on demand. De Bono’s methods have been used with astonishing success by leading corporations around the world. This book updates his landmark concept of “lateral thinking” and shows how to access your creativity and use it deliberately to generate new ideas and solve problems. We’re happy to point out that de Bono considers humor “by far the most significant behavior of the human brain.”
Sourcebook For Creative Problem Solving: A Fifty Year Digest Of Proven Innovation Processes edited by Sidney J. Parnes
If you want a better understanding and appreciation of your own creative process, and how to nurture this in yourself and others, this is your “mini‑encyclopedia.” It contains the most diverse selection available of relevant articles from half a century of effort in creativity development. An invaluable tool for teachers, managers, parents-‑ just about anyone looking to live and promote a more creative lifestyle and workstyle !
Tapping Into Your Creativity
This stimulating 30-minute video takes a newsmagazine format in focusing on imagination, intuition, humor, and playfulness as cornerstones of creativity. Believe it or not, these resources are within you. The trick is learning how to draw them out and how to apply them to real-life situations. Creativity experts as well as creative people share their techniques and insights. What works for them can work for you: simple devices to help you get past the common blocks to creativity. Copyrighted and produced by the American Management Association, this is an excellent video for you to use personally or with a training group or class– if you want to learn sure-fire methods of unlocking your intuition and innovation. Videotape
Teaching Creative Behavior by Doris Shallcross
This valuable guide from the President of the Creative Education Foundation will help you develop your own creative abilities along with a stimulating environment for creative thinking and expression. Includes easy-to-follow suggestions for overcoming barriers to creativity and for practicing a variety of powerful idea-generating techniques. Teachers will also find many practical tips and resources for integrating creativity into curricula.
Think Out of the Box by Mike Vance and Diane Deacon
At the request of Walt Disney himself, Mike Vance founded the Disney University over 30 years ago. This book is the treasure chest of Mike’s operational creativity. The same creative solutions that major corporations have clamored after for three decades are, for the first time, consolidated in this book. You’ll learn the nine-point success formula for developing individual creativity and organizational innovation. Along the way, you’ll also discover the vital role that humor plays in creativity, powerful techniques used to transform corporate culture, tools for “opening the box,” secrets to designing creative environments, nine fundamental questions to get out of the box, and dozens of ideation techniques that work. In short, you’ll learn how to turn your own ways of thinking upside down… so you can turn your organization right side up.
Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Business Creativity for the 90’s by Michael Michalko
Do you ever say to yourself, “Why didn’t I think of that?!” In hindsight, every great idea seems obvious. But how can you be the person who comes up with those ideas? Thinkertoys can help, with hundreds of hints, tricks, tips and games to turn anyone into a startlingly creative thinker. This book provides powerful idea‑generating tools which have been tested and proven in some of America’s top companies. Let the games, ideas, and creativity begin! This was the best-selling creativity book in our last catalog– people love it!
Thunderbolt Thinking: Transform Your Insights & Options into Powerful Business Results by Grace McGartland
Get ready for a thunderbolt and enlightening experience! This book includes a special chapter on the strategic use of humor as well as 25 pounds of TNT (Tips ‘n Techniques) to put thunderbolt thinking into action. Jack Canfield says this book is “inspirational and transformational! It will change the way you use your brain. Concrete recommendations and exercises will enhance your creativity and increase your success. I’m buying a copy for everyone on my staff.”
Uncommon Genius: How Great Ideas Are Born by Denise Shekerjian
Where do great ideas come from? To answer that question, the author interviewed 40 winners of the coveted MacArthur Foundation Fellowships (the “genius” awards). The result is this provocative, absorbing, literate guide to the birth of creativity. She uncovers how these creative geniuses work, how they sneak up on the creative process, and how they find the switch to that mental light bulb. This book will help you to uncover, sneak up, and turn on your own creative light bulb, too.
Visionizing by Sidney Parnes
A pioneer in the field of creative problem-solving for 40 years, Sid Parnes presents his latest work. This book offers state-of-the-art processes for encouraging innovative excellence. You can walk through (or skip or hop if you prefer) Sid’s step-by-step workshop format for cultivating creativity skills. Author’s royalties will be donated to the Creative Education Foundation to support its good work in researching, developing, and encouraging creativity.
Wake Up Your Creative Genius by Kurt Hanks and Jay Parry
This is an entertaining, stimulating, inspiring sourcebook of ideas and practical examples that you can apply in your daily life and work. These proven techniques to creative problem-solving have been used by da Vinci, Mozart, Edison, Einstein, and others. You’ll learn how to achieve a creative state of mind, the biggest barrier to creativity, how to avoid constipated thinking, a creative thinking technique that never fails, and playful ways to get ideas.
A Whack On The Side Of The Head: How You Can Be More Creative by Roger von Oech
This best-seller has taught the fun-damentals of creative thinking to millions of people in all walks of life, from students to CEO’s. Fully illustrated, filled with provocative puzzles, anecdotes, cartoons, stories, and tips, it systematically helps you maximize your creativity through such strategies as: looking for the second right answer, making the strange familiar, slaying sacred cows, thinking ambiguously, flexing your risk muscle, and thinking like a fool. This wonderfully playful book will help your creativity work for you.
What A Great Idea! Key Steps Creative People Take by Charles “Chic” Thompson
Ever envy those creative types who come up with the latest innovations and inventions in the worlds of science, business, and art? Where do they get their great ideas? Now you can unlock the secrets of their success-‑ and your own-‑ as you explore the four stages of creativity: freedom, expression, creation, and action. This user‑friendly workbook focuses on exercises that will flex your creative muscles, propel you beyond creative blocks, and change your perspective from dwelling on past failures to envisioning a future bright with success. What a great idea to buy this book and tape! 2 Audiotapes
A World Of Ideas by Bill Moyers
Based on his popular PBS series, this collection of interviews conducted with 42 extraordinary thinkers and doers focuses on the ideas shaping our future. Bill Moyers notes that he came away from each interview with “a wider angle of vision on the times I live in, on the issues I am expected to act upon and the choices I make…. If you have ever hiked in the Rockies and seen the vista change as you move from one plateau to another– revealing peaks, contours, crests, clouds, colors, and vegetation previously hidden– you know what I’m trying to say.” Like the author, you will come away with creative perspectives and wider angles of vision from this inspiring book.
A World Of Ideas II by Bill Moyers
This hot-off-the-press volume is a fascinating, provocative look at how imagination can enrich our lives and how we can realize our dreams for the future.