The Concise Adair on Creativity and Innovation [OP]

by John Adair, Neil Thomas (Editor)

Overview

This book encapsulates all of Professor Adair's writing on how to recruit the right people for your organization, team training, generation of ideas, communication and overcoming obstacles, the key characteristics of innovators and how to organize and use them to best effect.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781854182739
Publisher:	THO
Publication date:	08/01/2004
Series:	Concise Adair Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	152
Product dimensions:	6.25(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

John Adair is widely acknowledged as one of the most significant influences on management and leadership development in the world. He studied history at Cambridge University and holds higher degrees from the Universities of Oxford and London. He became the world's first Professor of Leadership Studies at the University of Surrey and is internationally known as a consultant. He is the author of many respected books on management and leadership.

Neil Thomas has written three novels, but Spy Without a Cause is the first to deal with government agents, crooked regimes, bent businessmen, femme fatales, and sharp tax experts.

His first novel was All Through the Night, a Welsh Western rooted in the 1790s, and his second was Keeping the Lid On, a dark story set in a small private school in the early 2000s.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Part one: Creative thinking
The creative process
Obstacles which inhibit creativity
The non-creative person
Developing creativity
Remember
Decision-making and the creative thinker
Key elements of creative thinking and decision-making
Analysis
Synthesis
Valuing
Other useful approaches to creative thinking and decision-making
Imaginative thinking
Conceptual thinking
Intuition
Checklist: How does your mind work?
Using creative thinking to evaluate the options
Checklist: Options
Calculating the risks
Part two: Innovation
The process of innovation
Five factors to create the right climate for innovation
Innovation and organisation
Characteristics of an innovative organisation
Checklist for the innovative organisation
What qualities should a chief executive as a leader have?
Motivation and innovation
Characteristics to look for when recruiting
What do innovative people expect from the organisation they work for?
Distinctive characteristics of the creative leader
The generation of ideas
Team innovation
Communicating about innovation
Checklist for building on ideas
Brainstorming
Checklist: Brainstorming
Two more methods of collecting ideas
Suggestion schemes
Quality circles
Checklist for the generation of ideas
Dealing with change and overcoming obstacles to innovation
Criticism
Exercise: Overcoming obstacles
Part three: Summary
A creative thinker and innovator in practice
The seven habits of successful creative thinkers and innovators
1 Thinking outside the apparent confines of the problem/situation
Checklist: Beyond the nine dots
2 Welcoming chance intrusions
Checklist: Chance intrusions
3 Listening to your depth mind
(the unconscious mind)
Checklist: Are you listening to your depth mind?
4 Suspending judgement
Checklist: Suspending judgement
5 Using the stepping stones of analogy
Exercise: Putting the stepping stones of analogy into practice
6 Tolerating ambiguity
Checklist: Tolerating ambiguity
7 Banking all ideas from all sources
Checklist: Banking ideas
Conclusion
Checklist for creativity and innovation
Appendix
Solutions to problems
Quotes about creativity and innovation