Imagination Engineering: A Toolkit for Business Creativity [Paperback]

A roadmap from here to there when you don't know where there is.
Creativity isn't simply important to the manager of the future; it's essential. Innovation, differentiation and "out of the box" thinking are the ultimate sources of commercial advantage in our age of ultra-competitiveness. And like every other essential business skill, creativity can be developed.
Imagination Engineering offers a proven and highly successful formula for developing your business creativity skills. Putting problem solving and idea generating techniques into a convenient and easy to remember framework. This highly practical and enjoyable guide covers all the stages of the creative process from identifying a problem to implementing a solution.

"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 utilised within normal business processes. Business is fast, furious, frenetic and focused. Creativity can make it fun as well" Mark Ralf, Director and SVP Purchasing, SmithKline Beecham Innovation and differentiation are the most important drivers of competitive advantage. Creativity isn't important to managers of the future; it's essential. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Paul Birch worked with British Airways for 19 years in a range of roles covering Operational Research, IT, Marketing, Finance, Strategy and finally became a Corporate Jester, challenging tradition and convention at every level. He is now a best selling author and runs his own creativity consultancy. Brian Clagg spent 17 years in corporate world, specialising in finding new and innovative ways of using computers and information to benefit business. He is now a successful freelance writer and author and has set up Creativity Unleashed Limited - which specialises in consultancy on business creativity and usability.

There are few things more frightening than the typical business reaction 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 the search for 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 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. If you want to apply creativity, you will be the sort of person who gets things done. For this reason, rather than loading the book up front with chapters of theory, we begin with a quick warm-up exercise in creativity, followed by a practical guide to using Imagination Engineering. TABLE OF CONTENTS: 1. What it's all about 2. Getting started 3. Surveying 4. Building 5. Waymarking 6. Navigating 7. Institutionalizing creativity 8. Making work fun 9. Computer-supported creativity 10. Group creativity 11. The future - beyond techniques 12. Go forth and create! --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.