Creativity: A Short and Cheerful Guide
by John Cleese
The central theme of this short book is tapping into your subconscious thoughts for ideas which you can then develop consciously and analytically. Cleese writes, “I began to realize that my unconscious was working on stuff all the time, without my being consciously aware of it.”
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Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace
by Gordon MacKenzie
This book is about maintaining creativity within bureaucratic environments. Gordon MacKenzie worked as an artist at Hallmark Cards for 30 years, culminating in a role titled Corporate Paradox.
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Intellectual Property and the Law of Ideas
by Kurt M. Saunders, J.D., LL.M.
“Valuable ideas take many directions—ideas for new or improved products, marketing strategies, advertising slogans, manufacturing processes, television show formats and movie plots, to name a few.”
“The law of ideas is the area of law involving employees, customers, inventors, and authors, who submit ideas capable of being reduced to practical application to business. It is a somewhat amorphous amalgam of contract law, property law, and tort law precedents that has been stitched together by courts over the years.”
Now there’s a book which pulls it all together.
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Go Luck Yourself: 40 Ways to Stack the Odds in Your Brand’s Favour
by Andy Nairn
“After almost 30 years in advertising, I’ve often been struck by the pivotal role that chance plays… Luck remains a dirty secret because it’s seen to undermine the virtues of hard work, talent, and intelligence that are at the heart of any successful business culture… I believe that luck exists—and also that you can improve it.”
Andy Nairn is co-founder of Lucky Generals, a creative agency in the UK whose clients include Yorkshire Tea and the Co-op. His book consists of 40 bite-sized chapters divided into to four sections:
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Making Art Work: How Cold War Engineers and Artists Forged a New Creative Culture
by W. Patrick McCray
This book picks up where C.P. Snow left off in his 1959 book The Two Cultures. Snow was a British chemist turned novelist who had scientist friends and literary friends, but he observed that these groups were two separate cultures who rarely communicated with each other. Patrick McCray is a history professor at UC Santa Barbara. In Making Art Work, he studies several endeavors to bridge this divide, primarily in the 1960s, but also more recently. Specifically the book is about collaborations between artists and engineers.
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Eat, Sleep, Innovate: How to Make Creativity an Everyday Habit Inside Your Organization
by Scott D. Anthony, Paul Cobban, Natalie Painchaud, Andy Parker
My grandfather used to tell me I was full of beans when I was being rambunctious. In contrast, this book is full of BEANS—behavior enablers, artifacts, and nudges—which are ways to encourage a new behavior.
The book is about developing a culture of innovation—not just for engineers and scientists, but throughout the organization. Three of the co-authors are with Innosight, a consulting firm co-founded by Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen (1952-2020), who wrote The Innovator’s Dilemma. Paul Cobban is Chief Data and Transformation Officer at DBS Bank, the largest bank in Singapore.
Continue reading “Eat, Sleep, Innovate”An interview with Peter McGraw
author of Shtick to Business: What the masters of comedy can teach you
about breaking rules, being fearless, and building a serious career.
October 15, 2020 — 38 minutes — Book Review — Amazon
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Shtick to Business: What the masters of comedy can teach you about breaking rules, being fearless, and building a serious career
by Peter McGraw (interview)
This book is about applying the wisdom of successful comedians to business management. Topics include targeting your audience and differentiating your brand, the creative process, innovation, diversity, teamwork, and writing skills. Peter McGraw is a behavioral economist, professor, and director of the Humor Research Lab (HuRL).
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Humans are Underrated: What High Achievers Know that Brilliant Machines Never Will
by Geoff Colvin
“The number of people who wrongly believed they could never be replaced by a computer keeps growing.” So what are the skills in which humans can maintain a competitive advantage over machines?
“Skills of interaction are becoming the key to success… Now, as technology drives forward more powerfully every year, the transition to the newly valuable skills of empathizing, collaborating, creating, leading, and building relationships is happening faster than corporations, governments, education systems, or most human psyches can keep up with.”
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Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life
by Rory Sutherland
In Alchemy—published simultaneously in the U.K. with a punchier subtitle: The Surprising Power of Ideas that Don’t Make Sense—Sutherland writes with a humorous style filled with wisdom about consumer behavior, innovation, branding, hiring, the weakness of market research, and more.
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The Key Point 