[.ca] Corporate Creativity: How Innovation & Improvement ... (ISBN 1576750493)

From Amazon.com:
Alan G. Robinson and Sam Stern, university professors who have served as advisors on creativity to organizations around the world, believe that the proper combination of imagination and originality is what really pumps life into a company. In Corporate Creativity: How Innovation and Improvement Actually Happen, they cite numerous examples of its place in celebrated corporate success stories and suggest various ways that other firms can harness it. Focusing on six elements they see as essential to the process, the authors show how virtually any institution can work to encourage creativity within its ranks.

hi:
hi. i liked this book. guys. ok. hi. again. books. shorts. bye. jerky

Well written with interesting examples:
Corporate Creativity is not an oxymoron. Robinson and Stern have written a good book that explores the key concepts that based on their work differentiate a creative organization from those that are not. The key steps the book expands on are that corporate creativity stems from: 1-Allignment 2-Self initiated activity 3-Unofficial activity 4-Serendipity 5-Deverse Stimuli 6-Within-company communication While the book does a great job at exploring these concepts and gives excellent examples, what I found lacking was the "how-to" compontent. As the author of Aha! - 10 Ways To Free Your Creative Spirit and Find Your Great Ideas, I am always looking for good books on the topic I am most passionate about. As far as creativity books, this one takes a unique perspective, the corporate rather than the individual. I applaud their work in this regard. Their examples are well-researched, and from a variety of industries. If you are looking to dig deep into the field of organizational creativity, this is an excellent addition to your library.

Quite entertaining, not meant as a "how to":
The book is good for readability and wide ranging examples of creativity in action. But I found its gee-whiz diagnoses of why and how creativity occur are superficial. OK for a weekend reading and maybe idea generation, but not of much practical use.

Entertaining stories, but implementation is up to you:
"That was interesting, but I'm not clear how to put it to use." As with many business books, I suspect many readers will have this reaction to Corporate Creativity. The book does a marvelous job of entertaining the reader with stories and examples of creativity. The authors should be applauded for digging out the buried true details of corporate creativity. (The section on the Soviet Stakhanovite movement alone yields a historical lesson worth the price of the book.) On the negative side of the ledger, I found two major flaws: analytical weakness in discussions of some central concepts, and a relative neglect of how to apply the principles to your organization. The chapter on the relationship between creativity and intelligence exemplifies the book's analytical weakness. The authors cite research claiming to demonstrate the absence of any significant link between risk-taking and creativity. But they fail clearly to explain what they mean by "risk" and do not distinguish it from recklessness. Creativity does require taking risks, even if that means the psychological risks of being wrong, or feeling embarrassed. This chapter does include some surprising and important results. Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are distinguished then several studies brought out to make the point that extrinsic motivation in the form of rewards encourages people to take the quickest and surest route to a goal, but not necessarily the most creative. While stimulating and important, this discussion of motivation is not entirely convincing. Clearly, intrinsic motivation is the gold standard, but the authors go too far in slighting extrinsic motivation (whether bonuses, stock options, prizes, etc.). The authors offer six principles of corporate creativity: Alignment, self-initiated activity, unofficial activity, serendipity, diverse stimuli, within-company communication. They illustrate each of these with numerous entertaining stories, but the lessons learned and how to apply them are relegated to a couple of pages at the end of each chapter. This book would provide much more value by trading off some story-telling for more implementation planning. Sometimes the authors provide at least a primer on implementing their six principles. For example, they briefly offer five characteristics of a system that promotes self-initiated activity: The system must reach everyone; the system must be easy to use; the system must have strong follow-through; the system must document ideas; and the system must be based on intrinsic motivation. Their first, and perhaps most crucial principle is alignment, defined as "the degree to which the interests and actions of every employee support the organization's key goals". Yet, despite numerous fascinating examples, the reader is left without much idea of how to ensure alignment. Other books, such as Geoffrey Moore's Living on the Fault Line, do a better job of showing how to align organizations and their cultures in ways specific to their marketplace. Overall, anyone concerned with corporate creativity will benefit by skimming the book, focusing on the end-of-chapter summaries and working out for themselves how to implement these principles.

A Good Reaf!:
You can improve your company's performance by increasing creativity and fostering employee innovation. Most creative acts are unexpected. Therein lies your company's creative potential. A company is creative when its employees do something new and possibly useful without being directly shown or taught. Creativity can and should happen in every organization, including companies with highly standardized procedures. While creativity is intangible, you can see the results of it in your company's improvements and innovations. The first five chapters provide an overview of creativity, outlining the six essential elements that creativity requires. In the following chapters, the authors detail the six elements, provide several case studies to illustrate their points and show how to achieve each aspect of creativity. This is a useful book for any executive who wants his or her company, and the people in it, to realize their full creative potential. We at getAbstract recommend this book to managers and executives in any industry.