Creative Acts for Curious People: How to Think, Create, and Lead in Unconventional Ways (Stanford d.school Library)
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WINNER OF THE PORCHLIGHT BUSINESS BOOK AWARD • “A delightful, compelling book that offers a dazzling array of practical, thoughtful exercises designed to spark creativity, help solve problems, foster connection, and make our lives better.”—Gretchen Rubin, New York Times bestselling author and host of the Happier podcast
In an era of ambiguous, messy problems—as well as extraordinary opportunities for positive change—it’s vital to have both an inquisitive mind and the ability to act with intention. Creative Acts for Curious People is filled with ways to build those skills with resilience, care, and confidence.
At Stanford University’s world-renowned Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, aka “the d.school,” students and faculty, experts and seekers bring together diverse perspectives to tackle ambitious projects; this book contains the experiences designed to help them do it. A provocative and highly visual companion, it’s a definitive resource for people who aim to draw on their curiosity and creativity in the face of uncertainty. Teeming with ideas about discovery, learning, and leading the way through unknown creative territory, Creative Acts for Curious People includes memorable stories and more than eighty innovative exercises.
Curated by executive director Sarah Stein Greenberg, after being honed in the classrooms of the d.school, these exercises originated in some of the world’s most inventive and unconventional minds, including those of d.school and IDEO founder David M. Kelley, ReadyMade magazine founder Grace Hawthorne, innovative choreographer Aleta Hayes, Google chief innovation evangelist Frederik G. Pferdt, and many more.
To bring fresh approaches to any challenge–world changing or close to home–you can draw on exercises such as Expert Eyes to hone observation skills, How to Talk to Strangers to foster understanding, and Designing Tools for Teams to build creative leadership. The activities are at once lighthearted, surprising, tough, and impactful–and reveal how the hidden dynamics of design can drive more vibrant ways of making, feeling, exploring, experimenting, and collaborating at work and in life. This book will help you develop the behaviors and deepen the mindsets that can turn your curiosity into ideas, and your ideas into action.
From the Publisher
SARAH STEIN GREENBERG
Why did you decide to write this book?
It is astounding what people can create when they have a little bit of confidence in their own creative abilities. For me, creativity and design is all about problem solving and making things better for people. Those skills take some practice, and not everyone gets the training or even the permission to look at things in a new way and imagine how they could be improved. So this book came from my desire to share the insights and ideas about design and creativity from the Stanford d.school with people who might not ever get a chance to come visit us in California. We’ve been helping people develop their design abilities for 15 years, but only a fraction of our approaches have been shared widely. I’ve seen so many people come alive in new ways while trying out these skills and applying them to issues and projects they care about. I want more people to have that same experience.
How is this book unique in its approach to creative thinking?
Ideas alone only get you part of the way: to learn to do something new, sometimes you just need a push to get started. This book is meant to help you to actively try out new ideas and develop your own approaches. It provides a lot of tools to help you reflect on your skills and process and continue to grow over time. The ideas in this book come from a huge community of designers and faculty; each one is full of personal perspective and experience. Our instructors come from just about every field: medicine, law, financial services, consumer products, education, government, philanthropy, engineering and more. The sheer variety will provide everyone with meaningful challenges and approaches that are new to them. Some are quirky, some are serious, and all of them share a bit of the d.school’s unconventional ethos.
How do you imagine readers using the ideas and exercises in this book?
The ideas and activities are organized in roughly the same sequence as you might use when tackling a design project. But every person is different, and every creative process is too. There’s no singular or right way to navigate. Plus, people’s creative needs change over time. One person might be currently interested in ways to improve how they collaborate with others, while another might be looking for how to test their ideas and get feedback on them. Someone might want exercises to improve as an individual, and another might be looking for ways to lead their team to more successful, creative outcomes. My hope is that each activity sparks something valuable, and that readers adapt and remix the ideas in lots of different ways.
Do you believe everyone has creative abilities that can be unlocked, even as adults?
Absolutely. To be human is to be creative, and most of us need a bit of help to get unstuck from time to time. Hearing my students talk about how design has helped them bring creative approaches to how they think about law, or biomedical engineering, or entrepreneurship is what I live for! Design is for everyone — it’s a way to make and create, and it’s also a way to keep learning, dreaming, and asking important questions about what the world could or should look like. The ideas and prompts in this book will help people draw out their own creative abilities — while you tinker with these methods and activities, you might discover things about yourself you didn’t realize were there.
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A thoughtful guide to using the tools of design to create feelings of inclusion, collaboration, and respect in groups of any type or size. A practical, illustrated guide to overcoming the challenges of creative work, including where to start, how to give or get feedback, when to change direction, and how to stand up for what matters. A thought-provoking guide to help you lean in to the discomfort of the unknown to turn creative opportunities into intentional design. A highly visual exploration of diagrams and data that helps you understand how “maps” are part of everyday thinking, how they tell stories, and how they can reframe your point of view. A vibrant, illustrated guide to blazing a unique and fulfilling creative path. An essential how-to for crafting a guiding motto that sets intentions, increases creativity, and helps accomplish your goals.
Publisher : Ten Speed Press
Publication date : September 21, 2021
Language : English
Print length : 304 pages
ISBN-10 : 1984858165
ISBN-13 : 978-1984858160
Item Weight : 2.15 pounds
Reading age : 1 year and up
Dimensions : 7.52 x 0.98 x 10 inches
Part of series : Stanford d.school Library
Best Sellers Rank: #98,328 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #93 in Business Decision Making #144 in Decision-Making & Problem Solving #227 in Creativity (Books)
Customer Reviews: 4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars (354) var dpAcrHasRegisteredArcLinkClickAction; P.when(‘A’, ‘ready’).execute(function(A) { if (dpAcrHasRegisteredArcLinkClickAction !== true) { dpAcrHasRegisteredArcLinkClickAction = true; A.declarative( ‘acrLink-click-metrics’, ‘click’, { “allowLinkDefault”: true }, function (event) { if (window.ue) { ue.count(“acrLinkClickCount”, (ue.count(“acrLinkClickCount”) || 0) + 1); } } ); } }); P.when(‘A’, ‘cf’).execute(function(A) { A.declarative(‘acrStarsLink-click-metrics’, ‘click’, { “allowLinkDefault” : true }, function(event){ if(window.ue) { ue.count(“acrStarsLinkWithPopoverClickCount”, (ue.count(“acrStarsLinkWithPopoverClickCount”) || 0) + 1); } }); });
13 reviews for Creative Acts for Curious People: How to Think, Create, and Lead in Unconventional Ways (Stanford d.school Library)
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Original price was: $28.00.$16.39Current price is: $16.39.
Kevin M. Green –
The manual for problem-solving you didn’t know you needed
If you’re trying to change, solve, fix, or rethink just about anything and hitting a wall, opening this book to just about any random page would be a good place to start. It used to be that you’d have to get yourself inside the d.school itself to learn these helpful (and fun!) practices for building creative muscle and unlocking new ideas, but this book really is like its own trip to the d.school. For people like me, who don’t think of themselves as creative first, this stuff can be a game-changer by making it easy to get out of your own way and tap into abilities and attitudes that you didn’t know you have. The narrative that Sarah Stein Greenberg weaves throughout and the awesome illustrations by Michael Hirshon are all just icing on the cake. Just get the book!
Emerita, Stanford University –
A bible for creative thinking! Be the first to own it.
The Stanford d.school may now be thought to be the crucible of creativity. Many of Silicon Valley’s great ideas grew from seeds germinated in this program. This book is a treasure trove of practical wisdom and practice. Sarah Stein Greenberg has assembled a collection of strategies, games, exercises, mind-melts, and how-to’s that can be used not only by designers and software engineers but also elementary school teachers, and retirees. The book itself is a thing of beauty, ingenuity and visual delight. Each of the 80 chapters is a practice, game or idea that is a stand alone.. But the sum total is a philosophy for approaching the creation of anything, including lifestyle changes that we can all benefit from. She does a wonderful thing by giving credit for each chapter to people who may have originated the idea or who became its steward. This reminds us that the creative process is a community activity and that we are all in this together. It’s a brilliant gift for anyone. I really love this book.
M T Evans –
One of the best works in this subject area!
An insightful and powerful toolbox for creatives everywhere.
Gerri Martorana –
Perfect
just what I needed for the man who was retiring
Karenteacher –
Unlock your creativity!
This is a how-to manual, covering a wide variety topics that all fit under the heading of creativity. The activities are grouped in to categories, and could be used one of two ways: as a path to creativity within the category, or by jumping around from one topic to another as suits the needs of the reader. These activities are self-paced, and can be completed individually or in groups, it was authored by the executive director of Stanford’s d.school, a program designed to help people find their own creativity. Think of this as a workbook or a manual, and use in whatever way you desire to help you unlock your creative potential.I am providing this review in return for being given a preview copy of the novel by NetGalley.
Teresa Vullo –
A well designed book about design
I like everything about this book! It’s just packed with assignments and ideas on nice thick white paper sandwiched between two heavy covers (with flaps that open) and a solid binding. It’s a very well made book! And the illustrations throughout are just lovely. It’s just designed perfectly, I guess as you would expect from the Stanford d.school. I will say that most of the assignments are geared toward professional designers and those working on teams. I do not fall into either of those categories and I still enjoyed it, as I simply find art and design so fascinating. There still were many assignments I was able to implement, either just for fun or as a learning experience as I get further along in my art journey.
David Brown –
So much use!
I’ve made good use of this book at work. I do wish it had different exercises matched together or some other ways to match together for examples of progression.
Tuneful Gal –
Go to Stanford the easy way!
Be sure and read the intro first so you’ll understand the format. Then read it forward, backward, or from any point in between! This is a creative’s delight! Adapt chapters for individual or group projects. Be careful About loaning it. You may have trouble getting it back! I t I s a KEEPER!
quist –
Fully of great ideas to help with inspiration. Yep I recommend it. Ans a really lovely design and easy to follow.
Frank Calberg –
Takeaways from reading the book:Page 31: Talking to strangers exercise:- Step 1: When you walk from a to b, for example from your home to the supermarket, try and say hello and/or ask a question to everyone you pass.- Step 2: Ask yourself these questions: 1. How did people react? 2. How did your behavior change from the first person to the last person you said hello and/or asked questions to?Pages 33-34: Follow your senses exercise:- Step 1: Take a 1 hour walk during which you follow your senses. For example, you can follow a color.- Step 2: Allow yourself to slow down during the 1-hour walk and not pay attention to where you are.- Step 3: Note what you do during the 1 hour walk, for example by taking photos and/or videos.- Step 4: Share your notes / photos / videos, for example via social media.Page 64: What do people, whom you consider to be creative, do?- Step 1: Think about people in your life, whom you consider to be creative?- Step 2: Think about what they do differently than people, whom you consider to be less creative?- Step 3: Think about what you can do to be more creative?Page 74: Learning how you learn exercise- Step 1: Think of a moment in your life when you learned a lot.- Step 2: Answer these questions about the learning experience. A. Where were you? B. Who were you with? C. What happened?- Step 3: Formulate a hypothesis why you learned a lot.
Alejandra –
Con ejemplos para utilizarlo en el día a día. Gran herramienta para ejercitar la creatividad en equipos de diseño.
Yang Kang Yi –
Love the creative ideas
John smith456 –
it’s really not a good book