Readers' Corner: Creativity and Innovation in the Workplace

Julia McIntosh
HRSDC / Service Canada Library
Source: Workplace Bulletin, September 30, 2009

Creativity and Innovation in the Workplace

Harris, Patrick
The Truth about Creativity: Rules Are There To Be Challenged
Harlow, England: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2009
HD 53 H37

There are 46 truths about creativity, according to Harris. For example, one of these - Truth 25 - is "Embrace Nephelococcygia". An intimidating word, it actually means “cloud watching”. Creative thinking can be a lot like cloud watching – what you initially see one way can, after a few minutes, turn out completely differently. It all depends how you view it.

These truths Harris groups under the following headings:
• Increasing Your Creative Potential
• Developing Creative Characteristics
• Putting Creativity to Work
• Traits of Creative Teams
• Using Creative Space
• Achieving Creative Success

Creativity is as analytical and systematic as it is free-form and improvised. Whatever form it takes, it is an integral element of the successful individual or organization.

Lundin, Stephen C.
CATS: The Nine Lives of Innovation
New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2009
HD 53 L86
Written by the co-author of the best-selling Fish!, CATS sets out to inspire innovative approaches to ordinary situations, as well as to spark curiosity and creativity, which can be applied in the workplace. He examines the four challenges, or impediments, to innovation and offers practical measures aimed at conquering them. The reader will learn how to:

• Be brave (fraidy cats never innovate)
• Stop being “normal” (make your own rules)
• Embrace failure (it's the only way to learn)
• Foster creativity (don't be a control freak)

The strategies to overcome the four challenges Lundin calls the Nine Lives of Innovation, each of which is a step toward realizing our inner CAT and becoming a fully contributing member of an innovative organization. As well as being informative, CATS is a very entertaining read.

Ruggiero, Vincent Ryan
The Art of Thinking: A Guide to Critical and Creative Thought
New York: Pearson Longman, 2007
BF 441 R83 2007

Accessible and engaging, this unique text offers concrete, practical strategies for critical and creative thinking and includes many opportunities for practicing these fundamental skills.

It introduces students to the principles and techniques of critical thinking, taking them step-by-step through the problem-solving process. Emphasizing creative and active thought processes, the author asserts that good thinking and problem-solving is based on learnable strategies.

It presents the reader with a process for solving problems and resolving controversial issues, in four parts.

Von Oech, Roger
A Whack on the Side of the Head: How You Can Be More Creative
New York: Business Plus, 2008
BF 408 V36 2008

This 25th anniversary edition, revised and updated, offers stories, examples, and exercises to help unleash our creativity. Von Oech shows us how to get in touch with our creative Explorer, Artist, Judge and Warrior. All of these work to generate a different element of the creative process, and together form the team for generating and implementing new ideas.

"By changing perspective and playing with our knowledge, we can make the ordinary extraordinary". To do this, we all need a figurative whack on the side of the head to dislodge those assumptions that keep us thinking along the same lines – and this book helps to start the process.