Imagination Engineering: A Toolkit for Business Creativity (Future Skills Series) - Softcover

Birch, Paul; Clegg, Brian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0273620649 ISBN 13: 9780273620648

Publisher: Ft Pr, 1996

Synopsis

Provides a tool kit of creative techniques that cover all stages of the creative problem-solving process.

About this title

About the Author

After 17 years in the corporate world finding innovative ways of using computers for business, Brian Clegg established Creativity Unleashed Limited to provide creativity facilitation and consultancy. His portfolio includes corporates from the transport, finance and pharmaceutical sectors, with wide experience of speaking at venues from company training sessions to the Wembley Conference Centre and Oxford and Cambridge Universities. A regular contributor to PC Week, Personal Computer World and VNU|Net, he has written a range of business books and novels.

From the Back Cover

"In the era of the global market, when profound economic shifts are taking place and the intensity of competition is increasing in every trading sector, traditional management thinking becomes redundant. Many managers find themselves facing a business journey into the unknown, with few navigational aids for guidance. Imagination Engineering sets out to survey the new frontiers and find adventurous routes across otherwise hostile terrain. It is recommended reading for those in enterprises of every kind." Sir Colin Marshall, Chairman, British Airways

"At last, creativity techniques that can be utilized within normal business processes. Business is fast, furious, frenetic and focused. Creativity can make it fun as well." Mark Ralf, Director & Senior Vice President Purchasing, SmithKline Beecham

Innovation and differentiation are the most important drivers of competitive advantage.

Creativity isn't important to the manager of the future; it's essential. The new generation of managers will have to respond faster, more flexibly and more originally than ever before. Creativity provides a powerful personal advantage.

Imagination Engineering: a roadmap from here to there for those times when you don't know where there is.

Reviews

In today's challenging business environment, executives find themselves forced to rethink the fundamental nature of their business as they literally re-create what they are about. Authors Birch and Clegg bring their past years of experience promoting creativity within British Airways, as well as in software design and review, to this latest in a long line of works on enhancing creative skills. The authors have conceptualized their process into the stages of surveying, building, way-marking, and navigating. Each stage is highly structured, with many tools or activity exercises, an explanation of the techniques of the tools, and practical examples. All along the way are frequent references to past works by Roger von Oech, Tony Buzan, and Edward de Bono. As with all works on creativity, actually applying these sound ideas requires hard work, attention, and professional facilitation from the training or human resource fields. The Internet suggestions are helpful for "connected" readers. This is a useful addition for all libraries, especially if they do not already have the works by the aforementioned authors.?Dale F. Farris, Groves, Tex.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

There are few things more frightening than the way many businesses react to creativity. It is treated with deep suspicion as the last resort of the marketing department; it is thought of as a strange quality exhibited by the long-haired types in an advertising agency, inappropriate for the rest of us. Yet creativity, properly managed, is a uniquely powerful tool for making things happen. Most of our day-to-day decisions are based on experience, on re-using the pattern of the past. But experience can only take us so far, When a problem arises which has not been successfully solved before, it is often not enough to re-work an existing solution. Similarly, in search of a new idea or a new product, we would be highly unlikely to come up with anything outstanding without a creative leap. And the pressures of the market can force frequent changes in a business in order to maintain a competitive edge. In all these circumstances, creativity can be a decisive weapon.

In recent years a raft of techniques has been developed to enhance the creativity inherent in everyone, but these techniques are often used in a piecemeal fashion without any structure. Our aim is to pull together a simple, memorable, enjoyable approach for applying creativity, that runs from establishment of the problem through to implementation. We have called this approach Imagination Engineering.

Edition details

• Publisher: Ft Pr
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0273620649
• ISBN 13: 9780273620648
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 204