Flash of Brilliance: The Eight Keys to Discover, Unlock and Fulfill Your Creative Potential at Work [Hardcover]

Like so many other books written by corporate presidents selling creative thinking, it is full of how I did this job at this prestigious company. A marketing exercise rather then a book to advice you how to do it.

I found that it had few ideas.

THE FLASH OF BRILLIANCE: INSPIRING CREATIVITY WHERE YOU WORK;
THE FLASH OF BRILLIANCE WORKBOOK: THE EIGHT KEYS TO DISCOVER, UNLOCK & FULFILL YOUR CREATIVE POTENTIAL AT WORK
by William Miller

In the field of creativity, especially in connection with creativity within the business landscape, most enterprising authors start off with excellent works. Many have breakthrough concepts in the beginning. As they start to churn out more books in the same genre, I notice a growing trend: the intellectual fabric starts to grow stale. Many of the original ideas get repeated. Some clever authors put in some innovative twists. I must add, this is no reflection of their good intentions &/or noble purposes in writing the books. However, it is obvious that marketing becomes the sole prime motivating factor.

The 'Flash of Brilliance', unfortunately, is one good example. I strongly feel the author's earlier works, namely, 'The Creative Edge: Fostering Innovation Where You Work' & his audio version, 'The Neuropsychology of Creativity', are excellent as well as inspiring productions.

In fact, 'The Creative Edge' plus the audio package, together with Michael Ray's 'Creativity in Business', were the first business creativity books in my hands during the mid- to end-eighties. They have been instrumental in guiding my managerial work, while I was still a corporate rat during that period. Later on, from the early nineties, both books were pivotal in helping me to design my own training curriculum pertaining to visual thinking & idea mapping strategies. I believe the former book has some intellectual heritage from the former SRI research outfit, while the latter book has its origins from a graduate program at the Stanford University School of Business.

'The Creative Edge' introduced me to the original concepts & practices of 'The Creative Journey' & also to the 'Innovative Leadership Styles'. What is quite boring for me is that I have to keep reading about these concepts in the author's subsequent works, which include 'Quantum Quality: Quality Improvement through Innovation, Learning & Creativity', published in the mid-nineties. Even his musings on the many creative moments in history, including Friedrich Kekule's insight & intuition that led to the discovery of the molecular structure of benzene, & Arnold Fornachou's spontaneous solution to the challenge of the ice-cream cone, as examples of how inspiration can strike, are rehashed in this book.

I do not deny that the 'Flash of Brilliance' is both an entertaining & practical hand-book for managers & professionals interested in leading for creativity rather than simply managing for productivity. This is particularly so if they have not yet read any of the author's earlier works. I would even concur that the companion workbook is a reasonably good interactive guide.

Unlike most business creativity books, this book has a deeper focus on the spirituality aspect: "only when we venture deep within our spiritual selves, even beyond our religious beliefs, do we access the core of our creativity." In fact, spirituality permeates throughout all the author's works. There is nothing wrong with this personal connection. My point: Don't get carried away.

In fairness to the author, this book still offers a gamut of tools & techniques to fuel creativity & innovation in the workplace. The book is broken down into four key sections:

- Breathe New Life into Your Work;
- Foster Breakthrough Innovation in Groups;
- Revitalize the Soul of Corporate Creativity;
- Keep the Faith - Integrate Profits and Prophets;

For the uninitiated, 'The Creative Journey' in the book offers a practical framework for identifying a challenge, focusing on priority issues, generating creative ideas, & implementing them. Likewise, the author's model of 'Innovative Leadership Styles' covering Visioning, Modifying, Experiementing & Exploring is certainly worthwhile to explore in the workplace. I remember at one point in time, Wilson Learning, a global performance improvement/training outfit (subsequently bought over by the Japanese & Larry Wilson, the founder, moved on to start another one under the name of Pecos River Training.), had converted this into a organisational assessment tool.

Coming to rating for the book, I would rate it rather low because of the lack of intellectual freshness from my personal standpoint. In terms of practical usefulness or utlity, particularly for first timers to business creativity, & also in contrast to other books in the same genre, it deserves a higher rating. I will therefore give it a 4.

This book is designed to teach the reader how to inspire creativity in the workplace. This is a how-to manual for inspiring and supporting creativity at the individual, group, and organizational level.

The author's initial lesson is explaining that all individuals are creative even though many do not realize their own creative talents. Many have particular strengths that lie in personality and are part of their character, when harnessed, can provide groundbreaking results. This book is also designed to help the reader recognize creative qualities both within and in others.

The author also offers a variety of techniques for developing ideas, and shares with the reader the four "innovation styles" on which all idea-generation techniques are based:
Visioning-imagine, in detail, a long-tern solution to a problem
Modifying-find a way to make the solution happen
Experimenting-combine elements I various ways and see if the solution can be reached
Exploring- find a way to discover new alternatives

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