Disciplined Dreaming: A Proven System to Drive Breakthrough Creativity [Hardcover]

Josh Linkner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 22, 2011

A 5-part process that will transform your organization — or your career — into a non-stop creativity juggernaut

We live in an era when business cycles are measured in months, not years. The only way to sustain long term innovation and growth is through creativity-at all levels of an organization. Disciplined Dreaming shows you how to create profitable new ideas, empower all your employees to be creative, and sustain your competitive advantage over the long term. Linkner distills his years of experience in business and jazz — as well as hundreds of interviews with CEOs, entrepreneurs, and artists — into a 5-step process that will make creativity easy for you and your organization. The methodology is simple, backed by proven results.

• Empowers individuals, teams, and organizations to meet creative challenges posed by the marketplace
• Turns the mystery of creativity into a simple-to-use process
• Shows how creativity can be used for everything from innovative, game-shifting breakthroughs to incremental advances and daily improvements to business processes
• Offers dozens of practical exercises, thought-starters, workouts to grow "creative muscles," and case studies

Disciplined Dreaming shows even the stuffiest corporate bureaucracies how to cultivate creativity in order to become more competitive in today's shifting marketplace.

#8 New York Times Bestseller (Hardcover Business)

#2 Wall Street Journal Bestseller (Hardcover Business)

#9 Wall Street Journal Bestseller (Hardcover Nonfiction)

#9 Washington Post Bestseller (Nonfiction Hardcover)

#1 USA Today Bestseller (Money)

#10 Publishers Weekly Bestseller (Nonfiction)

Q&A with Author Josh Linkner

Author Josh Linkner

Why is creativity in the workplace so important?
The world has dramatically changed in the last few years, and many of the competitive advantages of the past have become commoditized. With increased complexity, dizzying speed, and ruthless competition now commonplace in business, creativity and innovation have become the only true sustainable competitive advantage. Creativity is the one thing you can’t outsource. It’s the difference between game-changing companies and also-rans. Individuals may get hired based on their resumes, but they get promoted and succeed based on their creativity. Creativity has become the currency of success in the new era of business, and life.

What is Disciplined Dreaming?
Disciplined Dreaming is a five-part system to build, nurture, and manage creativity. It is based on my experience as a four-time entrepreneur, jazz musician, and venture capitalist, plus personal interviews I conducted with over 200 thought leaders--CEOs, entrepreneurs, artists, billionaires, nonprofit leaders. I developed Disciplined Dreaming by distilling the collective wisdom of this amazing group into a simple, easy-to-follow process that you can put to use immediately to drive your own creativity.

An accomplished musician yourself, you compare creative riffs at work to jazz improvisation. How do the two relate?
In jazz, 99 percent of the notes are improvised. Spontaneous creativity. However, that 1 percent that’s on the written page is incredibly important. It provides musicians with a framework to direct and enhance their creativity. Disciplined Dreaming is the business-world equivalent to that 1 percent. It provides a structure that enables creativity. In addition, jazz musicians use specific patterns and techniques as building blocks of innovation. I’ve been able to translate many of those concepts into the language of business, and I show readers how to inject them into their daily lives. These “riffs” can be applied to creative challenges of all sizes, and they help support the creative process.

How can you start working creativity muscles with a team that has grown stagnant?
The biggest inhibitor of creativity isn’t human potential, it is fear. While we enter the world with limitless creativity, our schools, organizations, and bureaucracies beat it out of us. We are so worried about saying the wrong thing, looking foolish, or having to take responsibility for a new idea that we govern our own imagination. Too often, corporate cultures stifle their most valuable natural resource—fresh ideas. This can be quickly fixed through using techniques in the book that deal with preparing your culture, physical environment, and mind-set to drive maximum creative output. Disciplined Dreaming includes new brainstorming techniques such as “RoleStorming,” “The Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup,” and “Stick-it-to-the-man,” which will get your creative muscles in shape in no time.

Editorial Reviews

Review

#4 New York Times Best Seller (Advice, How-To and Miscellaneous)
#8 New York Times Best Seller (Hardcover Business)
#2 Wall Street Journal Best Seller (Hardcover Business)
#9 Wall Street Journal Best Seller (Hardcover Nonfiction)
#9 Washington Post Best Seller (Hardcover Nonfiction)
#1 USA Today Best Seller (Money)
#10 Entertainment Weekly Best Seller (Hardcover Nonfiction)
#10 Publishers Weekly Bestseller (Hardcover Nonfiction)

“In today’s fiercely competitive global marketplace the most important resource any business has is the creative thinking of its people. In Disciplined Dreaming, Josh Linkner lays out a road map that will guide individuals, teams, and companies to higher levels of creativity. It is a journey that will lead to better ideas and breakthrough thinking—and those who take it will also have a lot of fun along the way.”
—Bill Ford, executive chairman, Ford Motor Company

“The creativity gap is real and it’s getting worse. Josh Linkner challenges you to become a disruptive force for change, and I hope you will.”
—Seth Godin, author, Linchpin and Purple Cow

“Josh Linkner is a tremendous business leader who has established a successful and sustainable company, as well as a culture that nurtures employees to help them maximize their potential.”
—Hon. Jennifer M. Granholm, governor, State of Michigan

“At Zappos, one of our core values is to be adventurous, creative, and open-minded. Disciplined Dreaming can help spark your creative potential.”
—Tony Hsieh, CEO, Zappos.com and author, Delivering Happiness

“The world has changed dramatically, and we have now entered a new era of creativity. Disciplined Dreaming is a roadmap to new ideas, and helps business leaders at all levels unleash their creativity in order to reach their full potential. This important and thoughtful book is a must-read to compete in the next era of business, and life.”
—Charlene Li, founder, Altimiter Group and author, Groundswell and Open Leadership

“There’s a lot business people can learn from jazz musicians. The days of managing by musical score are gone—today, victory goes to the improviser. If you are not tinkering with your business every day, sooner or later the markets will begin to tinker with you—and it won’t be pleasant. Disciplined Dreaming helps you avoid these pitfalls and provides a systematic approach to becoming that winning improviser.”
—Keith McFarland, #1 best-selling author, The Breakthrough Company and Bounce

“It is often said there are dreamers and there are doers. Never before has someone connected the dots and clarified the path between ‘dreaming’ and ‘doing’ like Josh Linkner has in Disciplined Dreaming. This is a must-read for the innovators and creators who want to cross over to the execution side and make their dreams come to life.”
—Dan Gilbert, chairman and founder, Quicken Loans, and majority owner, Cleveland Cavaliers

“Creativity fuels the growth engine that drives results. Disciplined Dreaming gives us a practical and inspirational roadmap to move us from incremental improvements to radical breakthroughs. Josh Linkner has successfully built some of the most creative companies in the world and shows us the way.”
—Jeff DeGraff, professor, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan and author, Leading Innovation and Creativity at Work

“Now all those days I spent dreaming can be put to good use. Disciplined Dreaming helps you harness your creativity. Well worth your time.”
—Keith Crain, chairman and CEO, Crain Communications

“In Disciplined Dreaming, Josh Linkner offers a guide for encouraging and protecting creativity as one of the few sustainable advantages in a relentlessly competitive environment. I would recommend it highly for the leaders and advisors to any high growth organization.”
—Victor E. Parker, managing director, Spectrum Equity Investors

From the Inside Flap

"As economies and world markets continue to change, businesses are constantly being pulled into cost cutting, automation, and risk management. Although these are important elements of business success, we can't lose sight of the driving force of prosperity, the reason that any company exists in the first place, the source of both business and human fulfillment: creativity."—From the Introduction

In Disciplined Dreaming, business innovator and jazz musician Josh Linkner shows exactly how you can create profitable new ideas, empower employees to flex their creative muscles, and tap into the power of creativity to sustain a competitive advantage over the long haul. Drawing on interviews with hundreds of successful CEOs, entrepreneurs, and artists, Linkner distills exactly how creativity can be encouraged, as well as its impact on the bottom line.

Disciplined Dreaming outlines a proven, easy-to-apply 5-step process—Ask, Prepare, Discover, Ignite, and Launch—that will help you and your team develop your creativity chops. Through illustrative stories, real-world examples, and fun yet practical exercises, Linkner shows leaders and team builders how to become immediately more effective in discovering new routes to profitable solutions.

Designed to be flexible, Disciplined Dreaming clearly demonstrates how creativity can be used for everything from innovative, game-shifting breakthroughs to incremental advances and daily improvements to business processes. With Disciplined Dreaming, even the most resistant corporate bureaucracies can cultivate creativity and become more competitive in today's shifting marketplace.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass; 1 edition (February 22, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470922222
• ISBN-13: 978-0470922224
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 0.9 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (54 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #41,029 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #59 in Books > Business & Investing > Organizational Behavior > Organizational Learning

More About the Author

Five-time successful tech entrepreneur; CEO Managing Partner, Detroit Venture Partners; bestselling author, Disciplined Dreaming - A Proven System to Drive Breakthrough Creativity.

Josh Linkner is on a mission to help the world unleash its creative mojo. The five-time successful tech entrepreneur and CEO/Managing Partner of Detroit Venture Partners delivers a clear call to action -- it's better to disrupt your organization before your competition does. The riskiest move companies can make today is hugging the status quo -- believing the future will be like the past is the fast road to obsolescence.

Learning to systematically jumpstart the creative energy of individuals at all levels of the organization is essential to finding new routes to growth, profitability and innovation. Linkner shows how to do it with clear and actionable insights that are based on his own experience and lessons from some of the world's best-known brands. He inspires people with powerful, fun and practical techniques. He ignites immediate and profound results and will show how to unleash hidden creativity and fresh thinking in every setting - from weekly staff meetings to major innovation sessions to new product breakthroughs. Organizations learn to tap into a deep well of inspiration and new ideas -- any one of which lead to dramatic outcomes to leadership, innovation and performance. People come alive as they engage their curiosity and wonder - what seemed ordinary becomes an opportunity for new discoveries.

Linkner delivers presentations with specific take-away value that will help organizations:

* Get unstuck - break free from myths and barriers to unleash creativity

* Tap into the hidden brainpower throughout the entire organization

* Establish an ongoing system to nurture and harvest the best ideas

* Avoid costly mistakes of flawed idea selection and measurement

* Increase the ability to deal with ambiguity and uncertainty

* Learn how to adapt more quickly and proactively to changes in the marketplace

* Apply focused creativity to specific business problems of all sizes and shapes

Josh Linkner is a creative force -- an out-of-the-box thinker whose approach to business was forged in disruptive times. He is an entrepreneur and a respected working jazz guitarist - a combination that accounts for his unique way of listening to business and the marketplace. Improvisation is in his blood - a venture capitalist that lives in the world of possibility.

His first book, Disciplined Dreaming - A Proven System to Drive Breakthrough Creativity, outlines Linkner's prescription for business success. The book, which was a New York Times bestseller, was named one of 2011's top ten business titles by Amazon.com.

Linkner is Founder and former CEO of ePrize, the world's largest interactive promotion agency which provides digital marketing services for 74 of the top 100 brands. Prior to ePrize, he was founder/CEO of three other successful technology companies. Each of his four startups enjoyed successful exits with a combined value of over $200 million. He has been on the board of over 40 companies, raised over $100 million of venture capital, employees thousands of people and fought through the dot-com crash, 9/11 and the 2008 financial meltdown. His extraordinary business accomplishments led him to be honored as the Ernst & Young "Entrepreneur of the Year" and as a President Barack Obama "Champion of Change" Award recipient.

As CEO and Managing Partner of Detroit Venture Partners, Linkner remains at the cutting edge of technology and entrepreneurship. The firm is especially focused on revitalizing his hometown of Detroit. Linkner is a regular contributor to Forbes and Inc. magazines and his work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and The New York Times.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 53 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Systematic Creativity February 17, 2011

By Dr Cathy Goodwin TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

This book was sent to me for review. The title is particularly apt. Linkner encourages dreaming but the emphasis is on discipline. Unlike many authors, he actually shows how to integrate creativity into a corporate setting, even one that has a buttoned-up culture.

For the most part I enjoyed reading the book. I would recommend it especially as a book to give someone who either is a senior executive or who owns a business. All books on creativity face this challenge. Most organizations (deep down inside) don't value creativity; they just give it a lot of lip service. Unless you're in a position to be a change agent without losing your career, you may just get frustrated with unexplored possibilities.

The book makes a convincing argument for why we need creativity in business today and why we need to care. Hopefully this section will give readers some ammunition to make a case to their higher-ups.

Linkner is a good writer who illustrates each point with vivid examples. He gives particularly detailed explanations of creativity briefs, which will be a good way for companies to introduce these ideas in the corporate framework.

The best parts of the book were the questions he uses to encourage readers to open their minds. I particularly liked Chapter 4, which proposes a series of exercises and ends with a section on developing your creativity chops. The meat loaf story (which most of us will recognize at once) and the cosmetic color story were fun to read and made the point. We also can benefit from taking classes that bring out our creativity, such as art classes or improv acting.

I think it's important to add that you need a strong sense of your market before applying any innovation, creative or otherwise. When innovations work well and are embraced by a market the effect seems magical. Starbucks and Zipcar are great examples. However, I think it's all too easy to ignore an innovative idea and dismiss it because we're sure the market isn't ready, nobody else is doing it, and our business consultants shake their heads firmly. I for one plan to try the exercise "Do the opposite."

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Dreaming on "the other side of complexity" April 5, 2011

By Robert Morris HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

The title of this book refers to what its subtitle promises to provide: "a proven system to drive breakthrough creativity," one that requires highly-developed mental and emotional discipline. Josh Linkner introduces a methodology, a five-step process, that he calls "Disciplined Dreaming." He interviewed more than 200 people whose creativity has driven their success. What he learned is shared in this book. After making the case for creativity in the first chapter and then explaining the Disciplined Dreaming system, Linkner organizes his material within a sequence of five steps: Ask (Chapters 3&4), Prepare (5&6), Discover (7), Ignite (8&9), and then Launch (Chapter 10). He adds an Epilogue, followed by two appendices. In the first, he invalidates "six common myths that inhibit creativity"; in the second, he provides "Additional Warm-Up Exercises to Jump Star Creativity."

Back to Disciplined Dreaming. Consider the differences between (a) allowing your mind to wander aimlessly and (b) filling your mind with a wealth of information relevant to answering a question or solving a problem and then allowing it to absorb and digest the information. I call the latter "mulling" and it can either be active and aggressive or passive and patient. During the course of his narrative, Linkner explains how to

o Define a "creativity challenge" (e.g. answering an important question, solving a serious problem or taking full advantage of a major opportunity)

o Prepare (mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, and environmentally) for the process by which to create or reveal a correct answer or effective solution

o Discover various "avenues" by which to reach that answer or solution

o Ignite forces (i.e. "juices") with various techniques to generate an abundance of creative ideas

o Launch the process by which to realize (literally, to make a reality of) each of the best ideas within a framework provided in Chapter Ten.

Those who are curious to know the nature and extent of their readiness to embark on Disciplined Dreaming process will be delighted to know that Linkner includes "Building Your Creativity Chops: The Self-Assessment" on Pages 31-38, an exercise that includes detailed explanations of what the results indicate. I also commend him on his eloquent as well as rigorous examination of immensely complicated issues associated with terms such as creativity, innovation, co-creation, integrative thinking, and inspiration. Whenever possible, he anchors information, insights, and even recommendations in a real-world context with which most readers can identify.

Readers will also appreciate what he calls "The Eight Commandments of Ideation" (Pages 164-166) as well as the aforementioned invalidation of "six common myths that inhibit creativity" and "Additional Warm-Up Exercises to Jump Star Creativity" in the two appendices. Josh Linkner brilliantly integrates what he learned from more than 200 interviews with what he has learned his own observations and (yes) disciplined dreaming. He has prepared his reader well for a journey only the reader can take. I join with him in expressing "Bon voyage!" to those who embark on it.

* * *

Note: I wish to acknowledge my debt to Oliver Wendell Holmes who inspired the title of my review. Long ago, he observed, "I would not give a fig for simplicity this side of complexity but I would give my life for simplicity on the other side of complexity."

28 of 32 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars For a specific readership May 2, 2011

By Beth DeRoos HALL OF FAMETOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

First let me note I tend to dislike titles that have 'Dream' in them. Disciplined Thinking would have been a better title. More mature and leadership mode.

And I agree 100% with reviewer Dr Cathy Goodwin from Seattle who wrote 'For the most part I enjoyed reading the book. I would recommend it especially as a book to give someone who either is a senior executive or who owns a business. All books on creativity face this challenge. Most organizations (deep down inside) don't value creativity; they just give it a lot of lip service. Unless you're in a position to be a change agent without losing your career, you may just get frustrated with unexplored possibilities.'

Unless you are in a position to actually put the ideas in this book in play, there is little useful information that can be used. For the individual, Write It Down, Make It Happen: Knowing What You Want And Getting It by Henriette Anne Klauser PhD is a book I would highly recommend because it helps change how you think, or how to focus and know the difference between just wanting something and knowing specifically what it is you want or need and then getting it.

Sometimes you the underling need to change how you do things in order to help effect change in others and especially in groups of people. Its why we have more followers than we have leaders.