Customer Reviews

The Creative Priority: Driving Innovative Business in the Real World

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Wow. This book gives a gret refresh of the way one looks at the business day. No longer do I drone on about how bad my workplace is. I am finding new ways to improve the workplace, and the work I do creatively and effectively. Thank you, Jerry Hirshberg. I once again have a rejuvinated outlook on my career. This is the kind of book that I'm going to read every year to keep my focus.

What would it be like for you to work in an organization that does not make exceptions for the creative maverick, because there is value in what the maverick stands for, but that provides for the conceptual maverick to become the catalyst who forms the organization? Instead of tolerating creativity, questioning and innovation on the periphery of the organization, outside it's boundaries, you change your business culture to allow creativity, questioning and innovation to permeate and form your core business culture? You shrug off convention. You no longer "reel in the maverick." You are the maverick. You are the supreme collaborative, out of the box forward minded innovative think tank that no longer "deals with" creativity and no longer "deals with" innovation and no longer "deals with questioning" as a method of operating your business. Indeed, your business seeks no longer to control the maverick but lets the maverick control the business. How powerful is that?

How can you profess to your employees, peers and clients that you are providing them with the most cutting-edge, innovative, appropriate, and, dare I say, cool experiences, processes and products when you operate centrally within a dogmatically traditional organizational structure? You can't. That environment invariably seeks to "reel in" non-conformity and authoritatively rubber stamp their control over it. It does not provide an arena that permits in reality the necessary opportunity for your people to generate their most profound ideas and concepts - those that have the potential to result in the best product, most thoughtful recommendation, most effective solution, most comprehensive response - those that best solve your client's problem. You are lying to them.

It's inevitable that business books retain a particular style of writing. Hirshberg will not win a writing award. But, his candidness of real world successes and failures, which he shares fearlessly make this book remarkable.

Read the book. Look at what a remarkable process he formed and the result of that leap and then measure it against how your organization operates.

This is a very good book. In it Jerry Hirshberg shares his experiences as founder and president of Nissan Design International. In so doing he characterizes the leadership, organization, and group dynamics that foster breakthrough innovation. Here is a sampling of the kind of thinking he unpacks...

* Bureaucratic "structure" with its need for predictability, linear logic, conformance to accepted norms, and the dictates of the most recent "long range" vision statement, is a nearly perfect idea killing machine.

* The atmosphere that follows out of the creative priority, while challenging and stimulating, also becomes supportive and humane, since a workplace safe for ideas is a workplace safe for people.

* Creative expression is a bipolar event; it requires both a sender and a receiver.

* There is a vital connection between abrasiveness and original thinking.

* Creativity and destructiveness are at the same time polar opposites and closely related cousins.

* The very idea of a "balanced person" as some kind of ideal is somehow troubling.

* New truths are often in plain sight, but are rendered invisible or menacing by an associated language, or a stubborn set of assumptions.

* Nothing can so effectively move work forward at times as not working.

* Work tends to be a convergent activity, focusing on the task at hand. Play is a divergent activity. It opens out and is not easy to contain.

* In the quest for creative thinking, research should never be left to someone else, as nothing stimulates the imagination as the impact of direct experience.

* Imaginative thinking cannot be constrained by preconception or prior intentions. Creativity does not play by the rules; it plays with the rules.

I would recommend this book for both leaders and members of creative groups as well those with whom they interact.

There are countless books on creativity as it relates to business. Most of them have about as much substance as cotton candy. They leave the practicing manager with little more than a disconnected list of suggestions as to how they can tack creativity onto a stodgy organization.
Jerry Hirshberg has written what I consider to be a best-in-class guide for the manager and the organizational designer who have the bottom line responsibility to actually build a company around creativity. Hirshberg addresses the compelling management issues that impede such an effort: managers are rewarded for quick decisions, not for making time for reflection. Functional experts are rewarded for staying out of each other's space, not for cross-fertilizing ideas. Employees who say "I'm lost" usually trigger an alarm, not a smile from the boss.
Hirshberg delineates the tensions that inevitably arise between left-brain-dominant folks who want to quantify everything and their right-brained designer colleagues who want to make things appealing to the senses. He gives solid, practical information about how to manage this tension so that it contributes to business results rather than impeding them. He uses the colorful metaphor of "embracing the dragon" to explain how to bring about creative activity among people who judge one another to be a threat rather than an ally. This is priceless information for the manager who must find a way to reconcile opposing forces on a daily basis.
Without dwelling on them, Hirshberg acknowledges the deeper issues that determine whether a creative enterprise remains creative over the long term or quickly fades after a hit or two. He refers to "the strangely dual-faced nature of reality at the deepest levels of understanding." Without this deep well from which all human wonder arises, creativity is just a thin coat of glitter. He touches on this theme to just the right extent for a book that is predominantly about running a business. One cannot be truly creative without a sense of awe, and Hirshberg conveys his sense of awe throughout the book.
Building and running a creative organization is as dependent on courage as it is on any other managerial trait. Hirshberg gives plenty of examples of what that courage looks like in the work environnment.
While this book does not tell the whole story on how to build a business, it addresses the issues of how to build a business around creativity extremely well.

This is a great book for anyone who is looking to improve the design process in their company. Hirshberg has successfully blended engineering and design endeavors to produce proven products. His approach to fostering design is refreshingly innovative.

Hirshberg was given a rare opportunity. To create a design firm from the ground up. Working from his (not-so-supportive) experiences as a designer at GM, he created NDI - attempting to do right what large firms like GM do wrong. His 11 chapters offer approaches to support his four principles for developing the creative priority in any organization: polarity, unprecendent thinking, beyond the edges, and syntheis. His examples are vivid and intriguing, both from the automotive world as well as from some of NDI's other clients. To get six stars -- I wish the publisher had produced the book more creatively (more color, more pictures, non-traditional format); I wish Hirshberg had included a picture of the pre-school furniture NDI designed (child-like chairs with protective rubber socks sound fascinating). But an enjoyable and educational offering, with some of the best non-fiction writing I have read in some time (describing GM's automotive design in the mid-seventies as "a manufacturer of truly general motors.") Well-done!

Hirshberg's introduction is slow, but necessary -- bear with it. Once the book proper begins, anyone in the working world will immediately try to apply his concepts of creative management to their workplace. Hirshberg's prose is efficient but by no means dull, and he doesn't write in a business vacuum, like many business writers. In fact, while it's valuable as a business resource, this book is as much about philosophy and art as it is business. A fascinating read.

Do not buy this book is you are interested in learning about the interesting cars and trucks the author helped design.

If you need another dose of management advice from a business executive who was successful in a narrow field and thinks he has a book full of brilliant insights to share - this is the book for you.

Working in a business based on creative thought processes and applications (lighting design), it is quite a struggle having a manager exhibiting absolutly no creative interests whatsoever. Having read "The Creative Priority", I have been able to put managerial skills into perspective. I have suggested it to my manager and she promises to read it. I hope that it will help us all to live in a more refreshing office atmosphere. It's nice to know other people are frustrated with their office environments and have positive suggestions for re-thinking the standard procedures.

There are a handful of interesting anecdotes (mostly about cultural differences between Americans and Japanese). There are also a few ideas that could have been expanded to article legnth - hiring in divergent pairs, for example - but they're nothing to write a book around.

Aside from the lack of substance, the book's real problem is that it's dull. Much of the book seems random. Beyond a couple of ideas, there isn't much in the way of specifics on how to manage or structure creative teams. Nothing redeems it, either - there's not enough on the history of GM vs. NDI to make this a good business history read (a la "Comeback" by Ingrassia and White). There's nothing at all on sparking creativity beyond the fairly obvious advice that every once in a while you need to pull back and review the situation from a fresh perspective. (For a good book on getting creative juices flowing, try "Jump Start Your Brain" by Doug Hall. It's a bit of an advertorial for his company, and doesn't include anything on managing a team, but it's fun, and sparks genuine creativity.)