Creative Acts for Curious People

CREATIVE ACTS FOR CURIOUS PEOPLE is from Sarah Stein Greenberg, the executive director of the Stanford d.school. A key idea here is to practice “How to Think, Create, and Lead in Unconventional Ways.” Greenberg provides a variety of activities, as she says, “loosely organized according to how we might introduce them to students.” An early section encourages readers to see things in new ways – working on attentiveness and moving beyond the obvious, it contain exercises for shadowing, interview essentials, and mapping the design space. Subsequent sections deal with building trust while working with others, forming hypotheses, and generating ideas. She includes activities to make those thoughts more concrete and to “tell a compelling story,” plus suggestions for soliciting feedback, reflection, and finding inspiration at a pace that works for you. The text itself “jumps around” with activities appearing in a slightly different order than shown in the table of contents – thus “stretching” the readers’ brains before they even begin. I wish we had more time to encourage students and teachers to try more of the over 70 assignments – many of which are contributed or praised by business leaders and business professors.