Why are some organizations more creative than others? What sets innovative, high-performing organizations apart? Can creativity and innovation be learned and enhanced? The answer to the last question, say creativity experts Nancy Napier and Mikael Nilsson, is a resounding yes. And with general consensus that creativity and innovation drive business growth, fostering creativity couldn't be more important. In The Creative Discipline, Napier and Nilsson illustrate six key factors that power creative, high-achieving organizations, and they provide managers with guidelines for incorporating those factors into their own companies. Business people will learn how innovative organizations get superior results from employees not just through disciplined methods of thinking, but also through free-flowing work spaces and work practices that help supercharge the imagination.
Combining research on creative organizations in several sectors, this book argues that innovative organizations known for doing things differently (and profitably) approach creativity and innovation in similar, disciplined ways, regardless of industry or field. That discipline fosters new ideas, solutions, and approaches, and it ensures that the flow of creativity is constant. The Creative Discipline demonstrates that: -Innovative, high-performing organizations have three disciplines in common: (1) within discipline mastery, (2) out of discipline thinking, and (3) a disciplined process that leads to innovation. -Innovative organizations also have three factors that strengthen the creative disciplines: faces (creative entrepreneurs, leaders, and teams); places (the physical and organizational infrastructure that is reflected in offices, buildings, and location); and traces (elements that act as catalysts for creativity―the culture, networks, and policies that support creative and innovative endeavors). The book explains each factor for creative success in detail. Best, Napier and Nilsson show creativity and innovation at work in a range of sectors from sports to software to theater and contemporary circus. They also show how innovative practices in developed countries like the U.S. and Sweden compare to those in developing countries like Vietnam. Companies can learn to innovate and in the process reap benefits like higher sales and profits, greater productivity―while regaining a valuable element missing in so many workplaces: fun.

The Creative Discipline: Mastering the Art and Science of Innovation

Business & Money

Napier, Nancy K.

Nilsson, Mikael

Management & Leadership

Praeger

An expert shows how to cultivate "aha" moments―flashes of insight―that lead to business innovation and personal success.
Insight: Encouraging Aha! Moments for Organizational Success helps individuals and organizations create the conditions that lay the groundwork for the distinct "Aha!" instances of insight―when connections between different pieces of information are revealed and ideas come together in ways that have never existed before.
Insight examines three stages of the Aha! experience, from the early confusion and chaos of "too much information," to how people organize and try out what they learn, to the "Aha!" moment itself. It then examines techniques people use to spark the creative aha experience―techniques that will work in a private business, education, government, nonprofit, and any other organizational setting. The book is based on interviews with over 100 people of all ages, backgrounds, and professions―from software developers to dancers, from detectives to football coaches―as well as the latest research results from management, psychology, and neuroscience studies about the workings of the brain in creative situations.
 • Includes over 100 interviews with people of diverse ages, jobs, organizations, and perspectives about how they encourage aha! experiences in themselves and others
• Presents multiple frameworks to illustrate how the insight experience happens and what activities help encourage it
• Offers endnotes and additional sources to explore
• Includes exercises and puzzles to encourage creativity and generate ideas

Insight: Encouraging Aha! Moments for Organizational Success

Book by Butler, Schmitt, Neal W., Klimoski, Richard J.

Strategy and Human Resources Management (South Western Series in Human Resources Management)

Ferris, Gerald R.

Butler, John E.

South-Western Pub.

Do you want to boost your organization's performance? Out perform your peers? It may be as simple as looking outside your own field. Wise Beyond Your Field shows how creative leaders use ideas from far beyond their own fields to do things differently and out perform their peers. The book reveals secrets and examples from leaders who compete with the best and soar beyond the pack. They come from sports, law enforcement, high tech, the arts, and more. What could a dancer learn from a football coach? What could a coach learn from a sheriff or CEO of a software firm? Much more than you might expect. Guaranteed to help you go beyond your own world, you'll learn and use new ideas right away. The best part: you'll have fun in the process.

Wise Beyond Your Field

Schert, John Michael

Raney, Gary

Petersen, Chris

Lokken, Bob

Kemper, Don

Hofflund, Mark

Cooper, Jamie

Boise State University CCI Press

The Business Aha! Tips books, offered by the CCI press–offer snappy, easy to read tips and "Use It Now" sections for immediate application of the ideas. Different authors bring their ideas and wit to the book series on a range of management topics. We now bring you the latest book in the BAT Series: Ethics for Managers. This guide covers new and emergent ethical questions, such as whether employees be forbidden from looking at social network sites at work. Social networks and other timely workplace issues require you to understand the role of ethics in corporate strategy, privacy, security, and law. This book provides the background, short examples, and practical tips to guide the reader through various workplace ethics issues.

Business Aha! Tips: Ethics: Ethics

Kaupins, Gundars

What we See, Why we Worry, Why we Hope: Vietnam Going Forward explores key factors that affect Vietnam's ability to move forward as a global economic player. While we see challenges we see many reasons for hope, including a new generation of leaders.

What We See, Why We Worry, Why We Hope: Vietnam Going Forward

Hoang, Vuong Quan

Business Culture

Many leaders undervalue the power of culture as a competitive advantage. Don’t make that mistake. LIVEculture offers tips from successful creative leaders on how they shaped, communicated, and grew the cultures they wanted for their organizations. Their stories of how they use culture to boost performance are inspiring, sometimes funny, and immediately useful. Learn the secrets of a Gang of creative leaders who continuously do things differently to get better, and happen to beat their competition along the way.

LIVEculture: How Creative Leaders Grow The Cultures They Want

Unfolding Curiosity: Wrinkles and Surprises fromBusiness and Beyond is a collection of quick reads that look at the "usual" with a slant. For relentlessly curious people, the idea that we can learn from fields far beyond their own disciplines is normal, to be expected.If you are one of those people - or want to be - you'll find a roadmap in this book. Many examples show how much of what we read, hear, experience or feel that is not directly connected to our work may offer a surprise or wrinkle on something we think we know. That, in turn, can help us learn.Unfolding Curiosity finds new ways to look at the world to give organization leaders ideas from unexpected sources - from sumo wrestlers and zoos, to foresters and river rafting guides. And much more. Take the plunge and learn something new today.

Unfolding Curiosity: Wrinkles and Surprises from Business and Beyond

Education & Reference

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

The transition from socialist or communist economy to market economy in many countries has been dramatic, unpredictable, and mostly on the surface, observable in new consumption patterns or higher standards of living. But deeper change in the managerial mindset in these new market economies has been much slower and less evident. It is crucial to business success for foreign managers to understand their transition economy counterparts. This book examines the interactions that foreign and transition economy managers have in building business relationships, the influences behind those interactions, how the interactions themselves change over time, and how to manage the process of building relationships more smoothly.

Managing Relationships in Transition Economies

Thomas, David C.

Economics

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Napier, Nancy K.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Napier, Nancy K.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Napier, Nancy K.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Creative Discipline: Mastering the Art and Science of Innovation

Insight: Encouraging Aha! Moments for Organizational Success

Strategy and Human Resources Management (South Western Series in Human Resources Management)

Wise Beyond Your Field

Business Aha! Tips: Ethics: Ethics

What We See, Why We Worry, Why We Hope: Vietnam Going Forward

LIVEculture: How Creative Leaders Grow The Cultures They Want

The Creative Discipline: Mastering the Art and Science of Innovation

Unfolding Curiosity: Wrinkles and Surprises from Business and Beyond

Managing Relationships in Transition Economies