Customer Reviews

The Art of Creative Thinking

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This is the third time I read this book and I am still frustrated by my inability to fully and clearly grasp the author's concepts. Nierenberg is better known for his works on negotiation, although he has written on other subjects. In this book, he attempts to teach the reader the five skills, as he calls them, of creativity - structure, order, relation, level and point of view. The problem is that his definitions do not seem to apply neatly to the examples he gives. As he explains it, structure has to do with differences, order with change (of time or place), for example, and relation with similarities. Levels refers to how closely or abstractly something is observed, and point of view to the perspective from whic a problem is looked at. This makes sense intuitively. The problem comes when Nierenberg gives examples and then says, well that's order and that's structure and that's relation. In some cases, it seems clear, but in most, it's not. He further complicates matters by casually mentioning that structure, order and relation can interchange depending on the point of view. All of this is very esoteric and obtuse, and makes one feel as if Nierenberg is holding the philosopher's stone of creativity, giving us glimpses on how these secret tools can help us become more creative, but hiding the real truth behind some sleight of hand. This is very frustrating because the book is replete with good examples of creative problem solving and innovation but it is a real stretch, for the most part, to go back after each example and say "Yes, this is how the principle of order was applied here to solve this problem." There are enough pockets of coherence and good examples of creative problem solving to make the book worth reading; however, don't be surprised if you leave with a sense of confusion.