Customer Reviews

Stimulated!: Habits to Spark Your Creative Genius at Work

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Pek and McGlade's book is as promised: an idea-packed, fun, and yes, stimulating book. This book tickles the recesses of your brain to help you mine your creativity, ingenuity and have fun doing so. Recommended for knocking the cobwebs from your mental gearbox.

TK

The American auto industry is almost belly up. American airlines are in a tailspin. Other major manufacturing and service sectors of American industry are in a state of collapse.

Not all of the problems of American industry are related to the price of oil. The lack of creativity and innovativeness in these industries is a large part of their problems.

There are those who contend that creativity just comes naturally to some people, like, for example, Ben Franklin and Albert Einstein. Not so, say Pek and McGlade, the husband-and-wife team of international consultants in creativity and innovation, in Stimulated!, their second offering on the subject.

Everyone, they contend, is born creative. But, the pressures of hierarchy and conformity in the modern American organization kill these creative instincts. Which, in turn, has led to the "can't do" culture prevalent in American industry today.

How to release our nascent, native creative energies, that not just a short while ago were responsible for the worldwide supremacy of American manufacturing and service, is what Pek and McGlade are all about.

Stimulated! lays out a 5-step process that Pek and McGlade have successfully implemented in Corporations in the US and in Europe. The five steps consist of Scouting for new ideas and insights; Cultivating these ideas; Playing with them in one's mind, Venturing to put these ideas into practice; and Harvesting the results. The interplay of these five steps leads to the generation of not just one or two good ideas, but, to a cascade of original insights that psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls "flow".

What kinds of projects have benefited from Pek and McGlade's creativity and innovation program? - changing the culture of the organization, developing new learning methodologies, raising the esprit de corps of teams and groups, doubling business volume, connecting the global workforce, creating unique competitive strategies, improving the work ethic, spurring product/service innovations, to name but a few.

Given the doldrums in which the auto, the airlines, and other major sectors of American industry find itself, Stimulated! is just the right book for the times! Anyone who owns a business, or runs a business, and wants to make the business more creative, more productive should devour the book entirely, and early.

It's paradoxical how business - any business - inadvertently creates an environment that is stifling to the very qualities it needs to nurture: Innovation and creativity. Especially in this somewhat crippled economy, fear and politics often become the norm, leaving little room for new ideas, risk taking, and true innovative thought.

Stimulated doesn't just make a compelling case why innovation and creativity are critical elements of a flourishing life or business. It reminds the reader that innovation and creativity are part of a process that we all need to practice. It provides a guide and tools to stay the creative course, find "sparks," and nurture and harvest them into compelling ideas and ultimately profitable results.

Anyone can wave a flag and shout "be creative." Heard it before, been there, done that - it's the innovator's version of the senior sales "pontificator" who regales his team with the dubious wisdom of, "we need to sell more." Stimulated clearly differentiates itself by going much deeper. The art of this book (aside from some very cool graphics) is that it charts a clear path with clear objectives - objectives any business and any business person should care about intensely.

STIMULATED! HABITS TO SPARK YOUR CREATIVE GENIUS AT WORK offers fine insight into competition, innovation and change and explores five habits that can help you release your creativity. From using new insights from the world and developing a creative, stimulating environment to committing to new and bold ideas and understanding the creative effort, this is packed with insights and inspiration - and perfect for business libraries and general collections alike.

I TOTALLY ENJOYED THIS BOOK AND I BELIEVE IT CAN SPARK CREATIVITY NO MATTER WHAT FIELD YOU ARE IN. SO MANY OF THE IDEAS COULD BE PUT INTO MOTION EVEN IF YOU ARE A HOMEMAKER, BY USING THESE IDEAS IN YOUR EVERY DAY LIFE.

This book's focus is on generating marketing ideas
and ideas of innovation to help business-types increase market share,
revenues, and profits for their businesses or the businesses they work for.
This book might be helpful for busy corporate types
who work 80 hour weeks and need to learn to schedule
a few minutes of "play time" into their day.
Although the book is sprinkled with quotes
from various artists, literary and otherwise,
it is not suited for persons of this ilk.
Persons interested in sparking creativity
in the visual or literary artistic arenas would
be better off with The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron.

How I got the book:
Review copy (which I'm keeping) sent to me on behalf of the authors

Background:
Andrew Pek and Jeannine McGlade are internationally acclaimed authors and entrepreneurs in the field of creativity and innovation.

Stimulated! is a business book to help people tap into their creative potential at work by describing habits to help find inspiration and using it to create new work, products, services, etc. The five habits are:

Scouting
Cultivating
Playing
Venturing
Harvesting
There are also chapters on awakening, stimulating, and sustaining creativity.

The strengths:
This book is an easy read at 195 pages. It's full of lots of colored illustrations, quotes, and comments about creativity and innovation. The core concepts of stimulating your creative talents are logical and similar to other books. The scouting concept, for example, reminds me of the artist date concept from Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, where the reader is encouraged to occasionally set aside blocks of time to basically go out in the world and do or see things that help engage the imagination and all five senses. Overall, the authors do a good job of presenting this overview of ways to stimulate your creative side.

The areas for improvement:
Even though this book is less than 200 pages, it still feels a bit too long, like it was drawn out about 20% longer than it needed to be. It doesn't bring up a lot of new ideas but it does get the job done. However, I tend to like more detailed anecdotes, case studies, or exercises in a book like this. I can appreciate that the authors may have had limited ability to talk about the work they have done for their clients, but a little more meat would have been good.

Other points of interest:
This is the most colorful book that I've ever read that wasn't a comic book or otherwise illustrated book. It has color on virtually every page. Did I mention the use of color yet?