Bryan W. Mattimore - Idea stormers: how to lead and inspire creative breakthroughs

More Praise for Idea Stormers

As a creative thinking expert, I am very familiar with Bryan Mattimore and his outstanding work in the ideation and innovation consulting field. Bryan is one of the best facilitators and corporate creativity consultants in the world. He is among my heroes who inspire, teach, and guide others in the corporate world on how to create original and implementable ideas that make a difference in our competitive business environment. Mattimore's newest book, Idea Stormers, offers a host of creative-thinking tools and techniques. More importantly, it provides an excellent framework for unleashing the creativity of groups, no matter what their role or function is within an organization. Mattimore's behind-the-scenes look at his successes with teams provide you with lessons and techniques to create, inspire, facilitate, and drive creative collaboration to generate the ideas you need to achieve uncommon results. Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much. Mattimore shows us how together we can generate original ideas, make good ideas great, and create game-changing ones.

Michael Michalko, author, Thinkertoys, Cracking Creativity,
ThinkPak and Creative Thinkering

Question everything! Hands-on and ready-to-go, here are techniques to get you started.

Seth Godin, author, Purple Cow

Bryan Mattimore has helped me create breakthrough new products for Godiva, generate innovative promotions for The Food Network, and most recently, with re-positioning Good Morning America. I know firsthand that the ideation techniques and innovation processes in Idea Stormers work, and that they can unleash the creative potential of any team. Idea Stormers should be required reading for anyone on the front lines of marketing innovation!

Adam Rockmore, senior vice president marketing,
ABC Daytime and News and SOAPnet

Copyright 2012 by Bryan W. Mattimore. All rights reserved.

Jacket design by Adrian Morgan

Author photo by Tim Geaney

Cover Illustration Michele Paccione, iStockphoto (RF)

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mattimore, Bryan W.

Idea stormers : how to lead and inspire creative breakthroughs / Bryan W. Mattimore. 1st ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-118-13427-6 (cloth)

ISBN 978-1-118-22517-2 (ebk.)

ISBN 978-1-118-23870-7 (ebk.)

ISBN 978-1-118-26329-7 (ebk.)

1. Creative ability in business. 2. leadership. I. Title.

HD53.M3744 2012

658.4092dc23

2012022687

first edition

To my wife, Hazel, who is creatively brilliant without even trying.

Preface

Some years ago, quite by accident, I happened upon my young daughter, Caroline, standing in front of the mirrored armoire in our dining room. Caroline was dressed in a beautiful princess outfit with a royal crown on her head and a magic wand in her hand.

As I watched her stare at herself in the mirror, I was immediately struck by her intensity. This was not, by any stretch of the imagination, just child's play. This was serious business. I watched and waited, unseen, curious to see what she would do next. And then, to my surprise, even though she was alone, she said something.

I have a magic wand, she proclaimed to her reflected mirror-self in an utterly determined voice, and I am not afraid to use it!

To this day, I still feel blessed to have witnessed such a moment of pure imagination and creative willpower in the life of my child. Over the years, as I've reflected on what my daughter said that day, I've come to see that it has great symbolism for both the work I do and this book.

I'm convinced that the insights, stories, advice, and creativity and innovation processes in this book can become a sort of magic wand for both individuals and leaders of high-performing teams. You have in your hands the work of a dedicated practitioner who, day in and day out, for over thirty years now, has been confronted with the creative (and often daunting) challenge of helping clients generate more and better ideas to solve critical business challenges. So at one level, there is nothing theoretical about the content in this book. These are accounts of what actually happened: stories of the creative mind-sets, processes, and techniques that helped generate breakthrough ideas and solve difficult creative business challenges. Essentially these are stories of what worked.

However, telling stories of what worked is not enough. I've also shared the why of my work: specifically, why I believe a particular creative approach, technique, or mind-set was effective for a challenge. My hope is that with these explanations, you will arrive at a broader theoretical understanding of the creative processes themselves, including which creative techniques are most likely to work best for specific kinds of creative challenges. It's the combination of and linkages among theory, technique, practical application, and results that makes this book different from how-to creativity and innovation books on the market, and I hope it is much more useful.