Jeff DeGraff - The Creative Mindset: Mastering the Six Skills That Empower Innovation

D O WE REALLY NEED ANOTHER BOOK ABOUT CREATIVITY? Take a quick lap around your favorite bookstore and you will surely find volumes on how creativity can transform you into a successful entrepreneur. Others celebrate the lives of the heroes of our imagination. Still others encourage us to relax and let creativity flow as we conjure up silhouettes in the clouds that float above us. This book takes a very different approach.

The Creative Mindset is about practical, everyday creativitythe kind of creativity you use when you are trying to come up with something a little special. Maybe you would like to take a fresh approach to your blog to make it stand out. Or perhaps you are trying to come up with a unique side hustle to bring in a little extra cash. It could be that you are just looking for ways to generate some inspired ideas that liven up your work routine. This book is a how-to guide for anyone trying to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary. Creativity starts with creating a better mindset, a new mindset, a creative mindset. As the celebrated Apple ad put it, Think Different.

Although a creative mindset is necessary for most imaginative endeavors, its not sufficient. Creativity, like any competency, requires real skill for you to take purposeful action. Even the most accomplished artists like Leonardo da Vinci and writers like Charles Dickens focused on the craft of creativity. These skills are what moves you from coming up with an interesting idea to producing something remarkable and tangible. It all starts by developing the ability to clarify the challenge and continues on to skills for ideation, communication, and evaluation, among others.

However, creative work is never fully completed. Think about how there are versions of software or editions of books. There are always more ideas and improvements to make, even though you may lose interest in a project or simply run out of time or money. With each project, you build your creative abilities and confidence. After all, you are your greatest work of art.

If youre a creative genius, congratulations; this book is not for you. If you are not, however, this book might be just what you need. The Creative Mindset is designed for a wide range of readersfrom individuals looking to make changes in their own lives to leaders who wish to empower others with the creativity tools and techniques necessary to make innovation happen. From accountants to zoologists, The Creative Mindset can be used as a personal road map and useful field guide.

Corporations spend billions of dollars each year trying to get their employees to innovate. What they miss is that the personal creativity of individuals is the driver of innovation. Here lies the blind spot of innovation that so many leaders miss: the space where the corporation and the individual meet. A company is at its most creative when its people find personal inspiration in their own lives. We need to understand creativity as a force that doesnt exist in a single fixed place like an office, boardroom, or workshop but one that pervades all aspects of our everyday lives. Innovation is about doing the creative work the company cant. All we need is a creative mindset and some basic creativity skills.

Our personal creativity allows us to level the playing field and democratize innovation. As the spirit of Chef Gusteau proclaims in the Pixar classic Ratatouille, Anyone can cook. Everyone, every day and everywhere, can be creative in his or her own way. All they really need is an effective way of thinking and a few inventive skills to overcome their challenges and capture their opportunities.

Anyone can learn to be more creative. The Creative Mindset introduces six essential creative thinking skills that can be easily mastered with limited practice and remembered as the mnemonic acronym CREATE: Clarify, Replicate, Elaborate, Associate, Translate, and Evaluate. These terms are carefully selected as the key elements of a creative mindset. They are a mental road map to guide you from a creative idea to a successful result. These six skills emerged from the most important research on creative thinking, simplified and summarized, and are drawn from over thirty years of real-world application in some of the most innovative organizations around the globe.

Each of these six skills has its own dedicated chapter in this book, complete with examples and space to practice. These skills are arranged like stages in a process. We suggest that as you read this book, you follow the sequence in order. However,