Tom Kelley - Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All

Copyright 2013 by David Kelley and Tom Kelley

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown Business, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.
www.crownpublishing.com

CROWN BUSINESS is a trademark and CROWN and the Rising Sun colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kelley, David, 1951
Creative confidence : unleashing the creative potential within us all / and Tom Kelley and David Kelley.
1. Creative ability in business. 2. Success in business. 3. Creative ability.
4. Success. I. Kelley, Tom, 1955 II. Title.
HD53.K4534 2013
658.314dc23 2013022760

ISBN: 978-0-385-34936-9
eBook ISBN: 978-0-385-34937-6

Illustrations by Beau Bergeron, Alyana Cazalet, and Dan Roam (see for a full list of credits)
Jacket design by Martin Kay
Author photo by Magnolia Photo Booth Co.

v3.1

PRAISE FOR

CREATIVE CONFIDENCE

A five-star WOW! This wonderful, heartwarming book may literally change the world. Indeed, it must change the world. Dont just read it. Use it. Now.

TOM PETERS, BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF IN SEARCH OF EXCELLENCE

An indispensable field guide for creative explorers of all kinds. This compelling book will help build creative muscles for when you need them most.

TODD SPALETTO, PRESIDENT, THE NORTH FACE

Creativity is not magic, its a skill. Get this book and learn the skill from the brothers who have taught it to more peoplefrom nurses to bankers to teachers to computer scientiststhan anyone else.

CHIP HEATH, AUTHOR OF MADE TO STICK, SWITCH, AND DECISIVE

A cross between Steve Jobs commencement speech on creativity and a modern-day What Color Is Your Parachute?, the Kelley brothers offer simple but effective tools for the Im not creative setbusiness leaders and professionals seeking the confidence to innovate.

JOHN MAEDA, PRESIDENT AND CEO, RHODE ISLAND SCHOOL OF DESIGN

This is the only book about creativity that youll ever need.

GUY KAWASAKI, AUTHOR OF APE: AUTHOR, PUBLISHER, ENTREPRENEUR

In hospitalitylike in all industriescreativity is the life blood of engaging employees and guests (customers) and it is the capacity that allows you to strengthen your brand with every interaction. This book can help you engage powerfully with employees and customers and keep your brand relevant through changing times.

MARK HOPLAMAZIAN, PRESIDENT AND CEO, HYATT HOTELS CORPORATION

Tom and David have put together a practical, useful and generous book thats essential reading for anyone in the business of being creative.

SETH GODIN, AUTHOR OF THE ICARUS DECEPTION

I have long marveled at the Kelley brothers ability to innovate in seemingly impenetrable fields (like health care). Now theyve unfettered that power in all of us, sharing the tools and inspiring the confidence we need to find the very best solutions to complex problems we face at workand in our personal lives.

GARY L. GOTTLIEB, M.D., PRESIDENT AND CEO, PARTNERS HEALTHCARE SYSTEM

David and Tom have written an incredibly insightful book that challenges us all to have the courage to break out of our ruts, innovate, and create.

TIM KOOGLE, FORMER PRESIDENT AND CEO, YAHOO

Developing both the courage and confidence to create and the ability to cultivate original insight is of enormous practical importance, and this new book is the first place I send people to learn how it is done.

RICHARD MILLER, PRESIDENT, OLIN COLLEGE

David and Tom Kelley show us how to effortlessly dance between the creativity of elementary school and the pragmatism of the business world.

JOE GEBBIA, COFOUNDER, AIRBNB

ALSO FROM TOM KELLEY

The Art of Innovation:
Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, Americas Leading
Design Firm

The Ten Faces of Innovation:
IDEOs Strategies for Defeating the Devils Advocate and
Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization

To Mom & Dad
who gave us the freedom to express creative ideas, and the confidence to act on them

This is a book from two brothers who have been close all their lives. As children in small-town Ohio, we played baseball on the same Tigers Little League teams in the summer and built snow forts together in the winter. We shared a bedroom for fourteen years, tacking up posters of muscle cars on the knotty-pine walls in the kind of finished basement that was popular in the Midwest. We went to the same grade school, joined the same Boy Scout troop, went on family vacations to Lake Erie, and once camped all the way to California and back with our parents and two sisters. We took many things apart, and put some of them back together.

But a close-knit relationship and overlapping lives do not mean our paths were the same. David has always been a bit unconventional. His favorite class in high school was art. He played in a local rock band called the Sabers with his friends. He built giant plywood structures like jukeboxes and grandfather clocks for the annual Spring Carnival at Carnegie Mellon. He started a firm called Intergalactic Destruction Company (the month Star Wars debuted in theaters) so he and his friends could do construction work together for the summer. Just for fun, he painted three bold green stripes along the back wall of our parents house, still there forty years later. And he always loved creating one-of-a-kind gifts, like the time he made his girlfriend a phone that would dial only his number, no matter what buttons she pushed.

Tom, on the other hand, followed a path that seemed more traditional. After studying liberal arts in college, he considered going to law school, tried working at an accounting firm for a while, and played an IT-related role at General Electric. After getting an MBA, he worked in a spreadsheet-intensive position as a management consultant. Along the way, his jobs were mostly predictable, both in their day-to-day work and the longer-term career paths each offered. Then he joined the design world and discovered there was more fun to be had coloring outside the lines.

We remained close all this time and spoke to each other most weeks, even when we lived eight thousand miles apart. After David founded the design and innovation firm that would become IDEO, Tom helped out there during business school and then rejoined full-time in 1987. We have worked together ever since, as the firm has continued to grow: David as CEO and then chairman, Tom in leadership roles that included marketing, business development, and storytelling.