Roger von Oech

Note: I read the 1990 version of this book.
I learned about this book in the bibliography section of Seth Godin's Linchpin. It's aim is to stimulate you to be more creative. I found it very helpful.

What is the point, you may ask of being creative? Creative people stand out from the crowd, sometimes make things possible that didn't seem so, may increase productivity, or maybe just make life more enjoyable. Some examples are Albert Einstein, Johann Gutenberg, Isaac Newton, and William Shakespeare.

What happens if you're not at all interested in being creative? This quote (in the book) from physicist Tom Hirshfield summarizes it well: If you don't ask "Why this?" often enough, somebody will ask "Why you?".

My favorite quotes from this book:
The best way to get a good idea is to get a lot of ideas. (pg 28)

The metaphor is probably the most fertile power possessed by man. (Ortega y Gasset, pg 44)

Some people are so closely married to their ideas that they put them up on a pedestal. It's difficult to be creative when you have that much ego tied up in your idea. (pg 94)

A man's errors are his portals of discovery. (James Joyce, pg 154)

...two benefits of failure. First, if you do fail, you learn what doesn't work. Second, the failure gives you an opportunity to try a new approach. (pg 160)

What concerns me is not the way things are, but rather the way people think things are. (Epictetus, pg 162)… (meer)

Roger von Oech takes the premise that our educational system and business environment stifle creativity. Through this book, von Oech provides illustrations, puzzles, inspirational quotes, and exercises to help us adults rediscover our creativity.

Von Oech points out that solving a problem requires "soft thinking", which is imagination and creativity, and "hard thinking", which is the practical phase of decision making. Both "soft thinking" and "hard thinking" have their place. When tackling a problem, we should start off like an artist, using "soft thinking" skills to realize there's more than one idea. We can then convert to being a judge, using "hard thinking" skills" to decide which ideas are acceptable and practical to implement.

A Whack on the Side of the Head provides numerous examples and great lessons to improve creativity. The book provides great information about where and how to use "soft skills" to look at a problem from a different perspective.

www.ResolvingConflictsNow.com… (meer)