Disciplined Dreaming: A Proven System to Drive Breakthrough Creativity

by Josh Linkner

Overview

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.

#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)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780470922224
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	02/22/2011
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

JOSH LINKNER is founder and chairman of ePrize, a dominant player in the promotions industry serving 74 of the top 100 brands. He is a four-time entrepreneur, venture capitalist, accomplished jazz musician, and highly sought-after keynote speaker. He has won several business, technology, and design awards, including the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award, Crain’s 40 under 40, Automation Alley’s CEO of the Year, and the Detroit Executive of the Year.

For more information, please visit www.joshlinkner.com

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Table of Contents

Preface ix

Introduction 1

1 The Case for Creativity 7

2 Disciplined Dreaming: Your System for Creativity 19

Step One Ask

3 Defining the Creativity Challenge 41

4 Driving Curiosity and Awareness 59

Step Two Prepare

5 Gaining the Keys to a Creative Mind and Culture 81

6 Preparing Your Environment to Promote Creative Passion 109

Step Three Discover

7 Discovering the Ways of Creativity 125

Step Four Ignite

8 Generating Creative Sparks 143

9 Igniting the Sparks of Creativity: The Eight Most Powerful Techniques 163

Step Five Launch

10 Bringing Your Ideas to Life: The Launch 185

Epilogue: The Power of One 205

Appendix A: The Top Six Creativity Myths (and Truths) 207

Appendix B: Additional Warm-Up Exercises to Jump-Start Creativity 211

Notes 213

Acknowledgments 219

About the Author 221

Index 223

Editorial Reviews

Linkner, founder and CEO of ePrize, one of the top online interactive promotions companies, outlines why businesses need to stay creative to stay competitive. After noticing that businesses have work flows and systems in place for almost every aspect of corporate behavior except creativity, Linkner designed a five-step process to manage innovation as part of daily, monthly, and annual goals. While the individual steps focus on keeping employees alert and responsive to new ideas, the fundamentals of the process mirror established project-management theory. The book provides checklists and questionnaires that spur readers through the process, as well as dozens of examples that highlight the effectiveness of creativity in the workplace. VERDICT One of the few books that outline a method for incorporating creativity within standard operating procedures, this will appeal to general business readers as it provides a straightforward plan for boosting innovation.—John Rodzvilla, Emerson Coll., Boston

Library Journal

A CEO and entrepreneur shows how a company can foster more original thinking and problem solving. Creative tricks from the world of music (the author is a guitarist) work well to illustrate how to break free from safe and familiar corporate operating styles. Narrator Marc Cashman captures the excitement in these sections—he seems to understand the often-cryptic language of jazz. With the nonmusical parts of this guide, his distinctive voice and smart-aleck tone add an undercurrent of sophisticated fun to material that at times sounds overpopulated with lists and prescriptions. Cashman demonstrates such a good grasp of the message and has such a good time performing it that one is fully convinced of the potential for any corporate bureaucracy to become more hospitable to creativity—a necessity for today’s markets. T.W. © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

AUGUST 2011 - AudioFile