Cracking Creativity: The Secrets of Creative Genius
by: Michael Michalko
Topics include: geniuses produce, how geniuses, imaginary excursion, structured imagination, major cause categories, your problem statement, dissimilar subjects, creative accident, mind popping, same old ideas, forcing connections, list your ideas, idea quota, random stimuli, group brainstorming session, perfect cup, ask each participant
Book Description
What exactly is creativity? Why do some people seem to have so much of it? Can their secrets be learned? In this trail-blazing book, internationally renowned business creativity expert Michael Michalko answers these questions and more, bringing life-changing techniques into everyone's reach. Michalko has researched and analyzed over 100 of history's greatest thinkers-from Leonardo da Vinci to Charles Darwin, Thomas Edison to Walt Disney-to show readers how creative people think and how to put their secrets to use. It's no wonder that Entrepreneur magazine lauded CRACKING CREATIVITY as "Required reading for anyone in business." Packed with practical exercises and strategies for stimulating creativity, this original book will literally revolutionize the way you think and open up a world of innovative solutions to challenges that you face every day.
About the Author
MICHAEL MICHALKO leads workshops and seminars on fostering creativity, facilitates think tanks, and consults with corporations worldwide. He lives in Churchville, New York.
Reviews:
According to Michalko, what are the best strategies for "cracking" the barriers to human creativity? 1. Knowing how to see 2. Making a thought visible 3. Thinking fluently 4. Making novel combinations 5. Connecting the unconnected 6. Looking at the other side 7. Looking in other worlds 8. Finding what you are not looking for 9. Awakening the collaborative spirit The phrases "can activate" and "can enable" correctly suggest potentiality. However, if you are already convinced that you cannot think more creatively, you won't. Henry Ford once observed that those who think they can and those who think they can't are both right. Cracking Creativity will help you to develop the skills needed to release from within all manner of ideas, perspectives, and insights which (until now) have been suppressed. When we face an especially complicated problem or especially difficult question, he suggests that we ask "What are the alternatives and options? How should each be evaluated? Where are there possible connections? Perhaps synergies?" Of course, after we think outside the box and come up with really cool stuff, we have to figure out how to get it back into the box. Perhaps that is another book Michalko will one day write. On average, humans use only 15-17% of the cerebral cortex, that portion of the brain where the most important intellectual transactions occur. No guarantees, of course, but chances are that a careful reading of Cracking Creativity will increase the percentage you use. What are you waiting for?
A book for inventors, craftsmen, artisans, scientists, businesses, teachers, and most of all us students.
Michael Michalko's book made many areas fall into place for me, not to mention assisting my individual creative landscape, exercising my field of study, and mobilizing my creative engine.
Over the past year, I have been heavily engaged in memory improvement. Busy in such areas as loci mnemonics, peg systems, hypnosis, and many other regions. Cracking Creativity showed how rigid my thinking had become.
For example, pg.42 there is an experiment where students were separated into two groups. The groups were asked to read a passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. One group was asked to simply learn the passage and the other group were asked to read from "multiple perspectives," example: an author's perspective, another person perspective, also including their own perspective. Which group learned more information? Of course, the group that used multiple perspectives outperformed the other group. Furthermore Michael elaborates on this process and places many ideas on the table. He called this subchapter "Da Vinci's Multiple Perspectives," further along the chapter he elaborates "Take on a Different Role," then "Imagine You Are the Problem" and many more areas further along that blend to create a vast pool of creative thinking. I found this particular area very useful. Michael does not simply show problems in creativity without a creative plan-of-action for facilitation. He brings creative solutions to mind and elaborates on them in detail. He gives many examples for looking at a problem or solution, in many different perspectives.
Strategy Six: Looking At The Other Side, is an outstanding section in which paradoxes are shown and analyzed. A spectacular section of most importance, which I will not detail, one must read for themselves.
To my pleasure Michael thoroughly discusses, displays, and employs Mind Maps (Tony Buzan). Before Mind Maps are discussed, Michael shows a similar technique of Mind Mapping called "fishbone." Fishbone's are similar to Mind Maps and are an excellent idea organizer very similar to Mind Maps. Having read a number of books on Mind Mapping, I now recommend Cracking Creativity as "high priority Mind Map reading material." I rank this book second, only to be in favor of Tony Buzan's book "The Mind Map Book." This book offers many creative ideas that are shown for Mind Mapping.
There are many different techniques for creative insight located in this book, so many in fact, I only scratched the surface. Michael frequently comments on famous inventors, thinkers, and artists from science, mathematics, history, etc. in order to further his point of creative thought throughout this book.
For consideration: anyone reading this book should have a proactive mind and a healthy dose of perspiration otherwise an individual may not use the techniques provided. Many of the techniques provided require a pencil, notebook, and very little mental capacity. Group techniques are also extensively employed. Michael Michalko shows us the tools but they are useless if unused. More importantly this book showed MY OWN SELF how to think differently, analyze problems, create solutions, and even create more problems for which my mind now can easily produce solutions. In asking the right questions, Michael Michalko showed me perfectly.
I would like to recommend the hardcover edition of Cracking Creativity. Having not read the paperback edition, I found the hardcover edition of pleasurable type, large pages and diagrams nicely represented.
If I were to summarize this book, I would use the statement on pg. 158 under strategy five: Connecting the Unconnected
"Using this model, it is possible to see what can be done about randomly connecting unrelated subjects in thinking. The first step is to be aware that there is the possibility of this thinking strategy. The second step is to learn how to do it. The third step is to use this strategy as often as you can and to get rid of any inhibitions that interfere with your using it. "