Michael A. Roberto - Igniting Creativity: Dismantling Barriers to New Ideas

1. Chapter 2
2. Chapter 3
3. Chapter 5
4. Chapter 6
5. Chapter 7
6. Chapter 8

1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 2
3. Chapter 3
4. Chapter 4
5. Chapter 5
6. Chapter 6
7. Chapter 7

Michael A. Roberto

Copyright 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Roberto, Michael A., author.

Title: Unlocking creativity : how to solve any problem and make the best decisions / Michael A. Roberto.

Description: Hoboken, New Jersey : John Wiley & Sons, Inc., [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index. |

Identifiers: LCCN 2018043694 (print) | LCCN 2018045131 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119545767 (Adobe PDF) | ISBN 9781119545835 (ePub) | ISBN 9781119545798 (hardcover)

Subjects: LCSH: Creative ability in business. | Creative thinking. | Decision making. | Problem solving.

Classification: LCC HD53 (ebook) | LCC HD53 .R596 2019 (print) | DDC 658.4/03dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018043694

COVER DESIGN: PAUL McCARTHY
COVER IMAGE: GETTY IMAGES: CLASSEN RAFAEL / EYEEM

To all my teachers from childhood, who stimulated my curiosity and creativity, and most especially to Kristin, the most caring and dedicated elementary school teacher from whom a child could learn.

Tuesday, September 11, 1979. My family and I sat down in our living room, in front of our Sylvania console television set, at eight o'clock in the evening. We had purchased the TV Guide at the supermarket several days earlier to learn about the new fall broadcast network television schedule. Our family had three options that evening. CBS offered a new show, California Fever, a rather forgettable teen drama that was canceled after just 10 episodes. NBC televised the debut of The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo, starring Claude Akins. We didn't even give these two programs a second thought. Tuesday evenings served as appointment television in our home. As a nine-year-old boy, I loved watching Arthur Fonzarelli, Richie Cunningham, and the rest of the Happy Days crew. Of course, we didn't have much choice. Who in their right mind would watch those other two programs?

Shortly thereafter, my parents signed up for a new service called cable television. I remember the installer bringing a set-top box to our living room. Instead of turning the knob on the front of the television set, we now pushed down one of the box's 12 buttons to change the channel. Imagine that! We now had 12 options instead of just 3! Of course, we still had to get up from the couch each time we wanted to change the channel. The 12th button, the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (ESPN), proved particularly intriguing to me. No one in my neighborhood had heard of this channel. It promised 24 hours of sports coverage. Mostly, that meant a healthy dose of rodeo, billiards, and Australian-rules football along with college sports (often televised on tape delay!). ESPN did not have the rights to air the major professional sports in those early days. My friends and I mostly loved watching SportsCenter each morning, a show featuring the highlights from the previous day's sporting events, hosted by anchors Bob Ley, George Grande, Tom Mees, and Chris Berman.

Fast-forward 18 years. Cable television had grown considerably, and we had many channels from which to choose. Disney now owned ESPN, and the network aired in over 70 million homes across the country.

Today the television industry has changed dramatically. Broadcast television viewership has declined substantially over the past two decades. Netflix and Hulu have roughly 75 million subscribers combined in the United States.

Today, my family has an incredible array of high-quality programming options from which to choose. We can select from nearly 500 original scripted programs, up from 182 shows just 15 years ago. On any given day, my children might be binge-watching the new season of a Netflix or Amazon original show in a matter of days, or plowing through every season of old favorites such as Friends or The Office. My spouse and I could be binge-watching our favorite new program, The Crown, while DVRing something that we simply don't have time to view at the moment. Despite the radical change in consumer viewing habits, the broadcast television networks continue to premiere most series in September, air episodes once per week, and televise a season finale in May. Talk about sticking with the status quo.

The past year's Emmy nominations demonstrate how new players dominate the production of high-quality, creative programming. In the best-comedy category, ABC received two nominations, but the rest went to shows airing on HBO, Netflix, and FX. In the best-drama category, only one broadcast network show received a nomination (NBC's