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The Creativity Leap
Book

The Creativity Leap

Unleash Curiosity, Improvisation, and Intuition at Work

Natalie Nixon
Berrett-Koehler, 2020
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Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Applicable
  • Concrete Examples
  • Engaging

Recommendation

Creativity strategist Natalie Nixon has a message for leaders looking to stay relevant in a dynamic economy: Increase your organization’s creativity quotient. Striving to adapt to the complexities of a fast-moving business environment, many executives fail to appeal to their employees’ creative intelligence – the source of innovation. In The Creativity Leap, Nixon cites real-world examples to explain how pairing the “3 I’s” of the creative mind-set – inquiry, improvisation and intuition – with analytics will help you cultivate innovative behavior throughout your organization.

Summary

Data-driven workplaces reward analytics over creativity.

Today’s cultural norms stifle creativity. For example, schools no longer reward creative solutions, and instead focus on rote learning and hard-and-fast answers. Business leaders rely on data and analytics for day-to-day project work and issue resolution. Yet people in most lines of work – including law, medicine, engineering, agriculture and fashion– prosper when they integrate creativity into their work. Today’s dynamic business climate needs employees who can navigate difficult problems and intricate operations with creative solutions. 

Modern workers face complicated and complex challenges. Many see these two descriptors as synonymous, but they point to differences in the amount of control people have:

  • Complicated issues – Workers can, generally, address and resolve these challenges. They have a fair amount of control in the navigation of complicated issues, and, ultimately, work to find their way through them. For example, the navigation screen of an airplane presents a complicated challenge for students in training; however, many successfully learn to...

About the Author

Natalie Nixon is a creativity strategist and consultant. She also created a card game that helps leaders practice the principles espoused in The Creativity Leap. 

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