SARAH STEIN GREENBERG

Why did you decide to write this book?

It is astounding what people can create when they have a little bit of confidence in their own creative abilities. For me, creativity and design is all about problem solving and making things better for people. Those skills take some practice, and not everyone gets the training or even the permission to look at things in a new way and imagine how they could be improved. So this book came from my desire to share the insights and ideas about design and creativity from the Stanford d.school with people who might not ever get a chance to come visit us in California. We’ve been helping people develop their design abilities for 15 years, but only a fraction of our approaches have been shared widely. I’ve seen so many people come alive in new ways while trying out these skills and applying them to issues and projects they care about. I want more people to have that same experience.

How is this book unique in its approach to creative thinking?

Ideas alone only get you part of the way: to learn to do something new, sometimes you just need a push to get started. This book is meant to help you to actively try out new ideas and develop your own approaches. It provides a lot of tools to help you reflect on your skills and process and continue to grow over time. The ideas in this book come from a huge community of designers and faculty; each one is full of personal perspective and experience. Our instructors come from just about every field: medicine, law, financial services, consumer products, education, government, philanthropy, engineering and more. The sheer variety will provide everyone with meaningful challenges and approaches that are new to them. Some are quirky, some are serious, and all of them share a bit of the d.school’s unconventional ethos.

How do you imagine readers using the ideas and exercises in this book?

The ideas and activities are organized in roughly the same sequence as you might use when tackling a design project. But every person is different, and every creative process is too. There’s no singular or right way to navigate. Plus, people’s creative needs change over time. One person might be currently interested in ways to improve how they collaborate with others, while another might be looking for how to test their ideas and get feedback on them. Someone might want exercises to improve as an individual, and another might be looking for ways to lead their team to more successful, creative outcomes. My hope is that each activity sparks something valuable, and that readers adapt and remix the ideas in lots of different ways.

Do you believe everyone has creative abilities that can be unlocked, even as adults?

Absolutely. To be human is to be creative, and most of us need a bit of help to get unstuck from time to time. Hearing my students talk about how design has helped them bring creative approaches to how they think about law, or biomedical engineering, or entrepreneurship is what I live for! Design is for everyone -- it’s a way to make and create, and it’s also a way to keep learning, dreaming, and asking important questions about what the world could or should look like. The ideas and prompts in this book will help people draw out their own creative abilities -- while you tinker with these methods and activities, you might discover things about yourself you didn’t realize were there.