The Ultimate Book of Business Creativity
By Ros Jay.
Publisher: Capstone, 2000.
Paperback, 198 pages.
ISBN 1 84112 066 9
This is a book with a wide potential audience – I would believe a much wider one that the basic target population, managers. I feel that the range would be realistically from owner, Managing Director, Chief Executive through all levels of management and supervision, to management trainee, plus trainers, consultants and anyone who cares about improving their own and others’ businesses. It is about creativity, an essential in the 21st century for the effective development of business, but an approach that many industrialists shy away from as too expensive and too risky for them. The author explodes this myth and suggests that business people themselves should think of, and use, ways of improving their own business creativity rather than have ‘consultants .. charge thousands a day to help you think differently’.
The book is a collection of 50 tools, activities, ideas etc for helping business people transform their businesses in a creative way. The author, an enterprising business journalist and marketing and communication specialist, admits freely that they are not originals, being recognized and well-used techniques. But this does not detract from the collection, rather it represents one of the few occasions when a group of similar, practical tools are brought together. This facilitates the process of discovering, in one source, some approach to fulfil the aims, rather than have to research a large number of resources each containing one or two ideas, or attending so many conferences that ‘you would never be in your office’.
The tools range, within individual activities and group activities, from brainstorming, using analogies and metaphors, reversing assumptions, and brainwriting, through the Delphi technique, the Lotus Blossom technique, mind mapping, problem reversal, and sensory images, to synectics, intuitive techniques, and verbal checklists, to name but twelve from the collection. It is difficult to imagine a wider and more useful range of tools being collected and published. The individual tools include full descriptions with ample checklists, diagrams and bullet lists, detailed instructions on using them and many include examples of how the tool has been used or could be used in the working situation. Everything is written in a clear, enjoyable, conversational manner that makes it a pleasure to refer to the book
An excellent book full of valuable, creative approaches brought together in an imaginative way. Well recommended to a wide audience.
Leslie Rae
July 2000
