Cirque du Soleil. - Creative courage: leveraging imagination, collaboration, and innovation to create success beyond your wildest dreams

A deeply powerful and resonant piece for the creative soul that lies within.

Alexa Meade, artist

Creative Courage reveals a compelling and original path for our organizations to become more agile and to thrive. Its inspiring and inclusive message calls for our collective work to become highly creative and deeply nurturing. Creative Courage is transformative.

Susan David, PhD, author of the #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller Emotional Agility and psychologist at Harvard Medical School

I've been a student of great innovators, business tycoons, and CEOs for twenty years. By far the most predictive leadership quality is courage, particularly when a bold new path is needed. Taking decisive action in the face of massive uncertainty can be a lonely experience. Vulnerabilities are exposed. Red flags are raised. Yet creativity demands it. Welby's book is an absolute must read for anyone aspiring to make an impact in the business world. You'll not only learn how to be a better leader, you'll be inspired to be a better human being.

Jeffrey Cohn, author of award winning book Why Are We Bad at Picking Good Leaders (Jossey Bass), as well as numerous Harvard Business Review articles on leadership and innovation

In Creative Courage, Welby Altidor deftly expands the scope of what we traditionally call creative practice to include those from all callings and walks of life. Drawing illustrative threads from both the personal and professional, Altidor weaves a vision that is not only inspiring, but also provides the reader tools for moving towards imaginative action. Whether on the world stage or the theater of our own day-to-day lives, Creative Courage can help bring freshness and agility to how we approach our collaborations with others.

Lucianne M. Walkowicz, Baruch S. Blumberg NASA Chair of Astrobiology, Library of Congress, astrophysicist at The Adler Planetarium, TED fellow, artist

Creative Courage makes you look at the process of creation in a whole new light! Definitely a book to live by when you want to take your creative and collaborative skills to the next level. Just a great read for inspiring minds.

Jon Boogz, movement artist

When I met Welby Altidor, one of the very first things he asked me was, What are your dreams? Welby has the gift of tapping right into your loftiest imagination... and simultaneously giving you the sense that you just might achieve it. It's not a wonder. Welby has had backstage access to some of the most incredible creative talent on the planet. Written in a deeply personal and thoughtful voice, this book offers readers a chance to feel a part of Welby's world and find the creative courage they need to pursue their dreams.

Deborah Yeh, senior vice president, marketing & brand, Sephora Americas

Creative Courage brings a new ideological vocabulary that can spark epiphanies. It reminds us that the experience of creation is as important as the result of the work. After all, the journey of creation is what makes our daily life.

Asinnajaq, curator and filmmaker, Three Thousand

This book highlights the power of the collective genius of true intuition driven co-creation. It focuses on a three-way interaction

1. A man's personal story. 2. A man's professional story. 3. How a man magnificently encapsulates his audience.

If you channel what you genuinely feel from your very essence (not from your past story), your truth will show up in the most unexpected ways. A truly brilliant read.

Duncan D. Bruce, founding partner and executive creative director, The Brand Conspiracy & Associates ltd; author of Brand Enigma and The Dream Caf

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride

thinking the bus will never stop,

the passengers eating maize and chicken

will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness

you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho

lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

how he too was someone

who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice

catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say

It is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you everywhere

like a shadow or a friend.

Naomi Shihab Nye

Cover image: Vizerskaya/Getty Images
Cover design: Paul McCarthy

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Published simultaneously in Canada

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