Creative Intelligence made this short-list for best books in 2013 on innovation and creativity. CEO-Read focuses on books for businesss execs and managers who want to raise their creativity game. Is that you?
I’m in good company on the list. David and Tom Kelley’s Creative Confidence is on the list as well.
Back in 2010, IBM did a global survey of 1500 CEOs. For the first time, the CEOs said that creativity was the most important leadership ability. Creativity is more important today for senior managers than operations, marketing or strategy.
Leadership plays two central roles in promoting creativity. First, CEOs must understand what is meaningful to their companies’ customers. This is not the same thing as conventional strategy. Knowing what Frank Knight, the Chicago School of Economics founder called “higher order wants,” not just needs, is key in orienting your business. Lou Gerstner saved IBM in the 1980s by talking with its customers and discovering that they wanted help, not heavy metal big computers, from IBM. He turned it into a service company.
Knowing how to mine meaning is a key creative competency.
Second, curating creativity and then scaling what offers the most value and the greatest chance of success is a key CEO/leadership capability. Nearly all the great labs and great companies that innovate well have terrific curators of creativity who supply finance, markets and the making stuff to what they believe will provide value. In the art world, these curators are patrons. In sports, coaches. In startups, venture capitalists (or crowdfunders as in Kickstarter).
My thanks tot he curators at CEO-Read for including Creative Intelligence in their list of Best Books for 2013.
Look at this ad for the SuperBowl of 1984 and ask yourself–what should the woman be smashing today?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjyrqVgWPXY
Why are some of the smartest, edgiest and coolest among us disconnecting from social media? What is the deep cultural meaning of this disconnect? What are they trying to connect TO?
Knowledge Mining, Framing, Connecting the Dots and Scaling are key creative competencies. In using them, we can begin to see the patterns. We can begin to see WHAT’S NOT THERE that’s supposed to be there. And then ask why.
Know the answer to the woman throwing the anvil and you could know how to make billions tomorrow. Or do something even more meaningful.
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062088424?ie=UTF8%20&tag=harpercollinsus-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0062088424
B&N: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/creative-intelligence-bruce-nussbaum/1112757030?ean=9780062088420&cm_mmc=AFFILIATES-_-Linkshare-_-MdXm68JZJz8-_-10%3a1&r=1&