Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0470922222 ISBN 13: 9780470922224

Publisher: Jossey-Bass, 2011

A 5-part process that will transform your organization — or your career — into a non-stop creativity juggernaut

We live in an era when business cycles are measured in months, not years. The only way to sustain long term innovation and growth is through creativity-at all levels of an organization. Disciplined Dreaming shows you how to create profitable new ideas, empower all your employees to be creative, and sustain your competitive advantage over the long term. Linkner distills his years of experience in business and jazz — as well as hundreds of interviews with CEOs, entrepreneurs, and artists — into a 5-step process that will make creativity easy for you and your organization. The methodology is simple, backed by proven results.

• Empowers individuals, teams, and organizations to meet creative challenges posed by the marketplace
• Turns the mystery of creativity into a simple-to-use process
• Shows how creativity can be used for everything from innovative, game-shifting breakthroughs to incremental advances and daily improvements to business processes
• Offers dozens of practical exercises, thought-starters, workouts to grow "creative muscles," and case studies

Disciplined Dreaming shows even the stuffiest corporate bureaucracies how to cultivate creativity in order to become more competitive in today's shifting marketplace.

#8 New York Times Bestseller (Hardcover Business)

#2 Wall Street Journal Bestseller (Hardcover Business)

#9 Wall Street Journal Bestseller (Hardcover Nonfiction)

#9 Washington Post Bestseller (Nonfiction Hardcover)

#1 USA Today Bestseller (Money)

#10 Publishers Weekly Bestseller (Nonfiction)

Q&A with Author Josh Linkner

Author Josh Linkner

Why is creativity in the workplace so important?
The world has dramatically changed in the last few years, and many of the competitive advantages of the past have become commoditized. With increased complexity, dizzying speed, and ruthless competition now commonplace in business, creativity and innovation have become the only true sustainable competitive advantage. Creativity is the one thing you can’t outsource. It’s the difference between game-changing companies and also-rans. Individuals may get hired based on their resumes, but they get promoted and succeed based on their creativity. Creativity has become the currency of success in the new era of business, and life.

What is Disciplined Dreaming?
Disciplined Dreaming is a five-part system to build, nurture, and manage creativity. It is based on my experience as a four-time entrepreneur, jazz musician, and venture capitalist, plus personal interviews I conducted with over 200 thought leaders--CEOs, entrepreneurs, artists, billionaires, nonprofit leaders. I developed Disciplined Dreaming by distilling the collective wisdom of this amazing group into a simple, easy-to-follow process that you can put to use immediately to drive your own creativity.

An accomplished musician yourself, you compare creative riffs at work to jazz improvisation. How do the two relate?
In jazz, 99 percent of the notes are improvised. Spontaneous creativity. However, that 1 percent that’s on the written page is incredibly important. It provides musicians with a framework to direct and enhance their creativity. Disciplined Dreaming is the business-world equivalent to that 1 percent. It provides a structure that enables creativity. In addition, jazz musicians use specific patterns and techniques as building blocks of innovation. I’ve been able to translate many of those concepts into the language of business, and I show readers how to inject them into their daily lives. These “riffs” can be applied to creative challenges of all sizes, and they help support the creative process.

How can you start working creativity muscles with a team that has grown stagnant?
The biggest inhibitor of creativity isn’t human potential, it is fear. While we enter the world with limitless creativity, our schools, organizations, and bureaucracies beat it out of us. We are so worried about saying the wrong thing, looking foolish, or having to take responsibility for a new idea that we govern our own imagination. Too often, corporate cultures stifle their most valuable natural resource—fresh ideas. This can be quickly fixed through using techniques in the book that deal with preparing your culture, physical environment, and mind-set to drive maximum creative output. Disciplined Dreaming includes new brainstorming techniques such as “RoleStorming,” “The Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup,” and “Stick-it-to-the-man,” which will get your creative muscles in shape in no time.

From the Back Cover:

Praise for Disciplined Dreaming

"In today's fiercely competitive global marketplace the mostimportant resource any business has is the creative thinking of itspeople. In Disciplined Dreaming, Josh Linkner lays out a road mapthat will guide individuals, teams, and companies to higher levelsof creativity. It is a journey that will lead to better ideas andbreakthrough thinking—and those who take it will also have alot of fun along the way."
—Bill Ford, executive chairman, Ford Motor Company

"Disciplined Dreaming is a road map to new ideas, and helpsbusiness leaders at all levels unleash their creativity in order toreach their full potential. This important and thoughtful book is amust-read to compete in the next era of business and life."
—Charlene Li, founder, Altimiter Group, and author,Groundswell and Open Leadership

"At Zappos, one of our core values is to be adventurous,creative, and open-minded. Disciplined Dreaming can help spark yourcreative potential."
—Tony Hsieh, CEO, Zappos.com, and author, DeliveringHappiness

"Josh Linkner is a tremendous business leader who hasestablished a successful and sustainable company, as well as aculture that nurtures employees to help them maximize theirpotential."
—Jennifer M. Granholm, governor, State of Michigan

"There's a lot business people can learn from jazz musicians.The days of managing by musical score are gone—today, victorygoes to the improviser. If you are not tinkering with your businessevery day, sooner or later the markets will begin to tinker withyou—and it won't be pleasant. Disciplined Dreaming helps youavoid these pitfalls and provides a systematic approach to becomingthat winning improviser."
—Keith McFarland, author, The Breakthrough Companyand Bounce

"The creativity gap is real and it's getting worse. Josh Linknerchallenges you to become a disruptive force for change, and I hopeyou will."
—Seth Godin

From the Inside Flap:

"As economies and world markets continue to change, businessesare constantly being pulled into cost cutting, automation, and riskmanagement. Although these are important elements of businesssuccess, we can't lose sight of the driving force of prosperity,the reason that any company exists in the first place, the sourceof both business and human fulfillment: creativity."—From theIntroduction

In Disciplined Dreaming, business innovator and jazz musicianJosh Linkner shows exactly how you can create profitable new ideas,empower employees to flex their creative muscles, and tap into thepower of creativity to sustain a competitive advantage over thelong haul. Drawing on interviews with hundreds of successful CEOs,entrepreneurs, and artists, Linkner distills exactly how creativitycan be encouraged, as well as its impact on the bottom line.

Disciplined Dreaming outlines a proven, easy-to-apply 5-stepprocess—Ask, Prepare, Discover, Ignite, and Launch—thatwill help you and your team develop your creativity chops. Throughillustrative stories, real-world examples, and fun yet practicalexercises, Linkner shows leaders and team builders how to becomeimmediately more effective in discovering new routes to profitablesolutions.

Designed to be flexible, Disciplined Dreaming clearlydemonstrates how creativity can be used for everything frominnovative, game-shifting breakthroughs to incremental advances anddaily improvements to business processes. With DisciplinedDreaming, even the most resistant corporate bureaucracies cancultivate creativity and become more competitive in today'sshifting marketplace.