Karen Eriksen - Perfect Phrases for Creativity and Innovation: Hundreds of Ready-To-Use Phrases for Break-Through Thinking, Problem Solving, and Inspiring Team Collaboration

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To Kerry Johnson and Jim Cox of Hemsley Fraser, who believed in me, encouraged me, and gave me confidence in a new career as a trainer.

To Anne Bruce, who mentored the development of this book and is ever the ultrapositive and reinforcing guide.

To my daughter, the actor, who focuses me on what really matters and, in being creative herself, reminds me of the joy of creativity.

Today, people and businesses alike are discovering change all around themsome of it good and some not so good, but all of it inevitable and unavoidable. As a result, companies and organizations can no longer succeed without ongoing innovation, without regularly reinventing themselves, and without transformational change that moves beyond incremental, step-by-step problem solving. Problem solvingthe day-to-day, rational-brain process of systematic thinking, review, and strategic planning, in fairly predictable steps along a well-defined dimensionis still necessary. But problem solving is simply not sufficient for success in todays business environment. Innovation, in contrast, moves organizations and their people out of the box; it moves beyond incremental rational thinking to involve the whole brain, the whole person. As Frans Johansson, author of The Medici Effect, says, the necessary innovation is surprising and fascinating, takes leaps in new directions that last for years or decades, opens up new fields, generates followers, creates leaders, and affects the world in unprecedented ways. And as Teresa Amabile of Harvard Business School indicates, All innovation begins with creative ideas.

So, how do we get creative? How do we bring creativity into the workplace? Can we be intentionally creative, or does creativity just happen? Do we have to be born creative? How do we define creativity? Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman, in their book Character Strengths and Virtues, challenge us to think about creativity in terms of three factors:

How creative a product is

What underlies the creative process

Characteristics of creative people

They include the following in their definitions of creativity:

Activities in which people find a sense of purpose and joy while bringing happiness and meaning to others

The ability to generate ideas or behaviors that are novel, surprising, or unusual

Generating original ideas or behaviors that make a contribution to someones life by being workable or useful

They distinguish between the creativity of the true masters and the ingenuity necessary to generate creative solutions to various day-to-day problems that face us at home or at work. The creativity involved in ingenuity is accessible to everyone. According to Daniel Goleman, Paul Kaufman, and Michael Ray, authors of The Creative Spirit, such ingenuity is the way each of us displays flair and imagination in our own lives, going beyond the routine and conventional, and giving each of us a great deal of pleasure. Sidney Parnes agrees: Every human being has the potential to be creative, if given the opportunity and the right environment. Creativity is a skill that can be strengthened with coaching and practice. Parness mental model for creativity uses divergent thinking to expand the available options and