This morning I was sitting with my son of 2,5 at the kitchen table drawing trains. Probably a scene which is anything but spectacular for most people. After having drawn the 6.0 version of Thomas I just realized that I definitely changed as a person if I compare myself to how I was about 5 or 10 years ago: I have been working in higher education for about 5 years now and I still remember saying a few years ago in an endless amount of situations to my students: oh I am anything but creative, I lost my creative skills somewhere during my primary education...
And now I design creative innovation and value proposition development sessions, I facilitate team sessions of co-creation and my toolkit of ideas has been growing and growing every minute without limits.
More to that, my environment actually started recognizing me as creative and innovative. Quite a contrast I would say...
How is that possible?
Well, I did not discover the magic pill. I believe that creativity is something all of us possess. And even if you think you are not creative, you do become creative in the right setting with the right energy with people around you.
But here are definitely some interesting links where you can boost your way of working:
1, Some books about innovation and creative processes:
Design thinking of Guido Stompff (book in Dutch)– a really school-style book that explains the whole idea behind design thinking and includes lots of interesting examples of the author’s personal experience.
Value proposition design of Osterwalder – a great bestseller about the process of developing innovative value propositions that lead to success. Written by the authors of the Business Model Canvas.
The Innovation Maze of van Wulfen – not necessarily the most engaging style to read but the author definitely pinpoints some interesting aspect show different companies approach innovation. It gives a very clear explanation about why certain companies refuse to focus on finding customer issues as a starting point.
Creativity works – a short book written by my 2 highly appreciated colleagues Joris van Dooren & Coen Luijten. I read this book long before it was published and the simplicity of it really caught my attention. The authors explain how to formulate useful and relevant start questions, how to get rid of too risky ideas and how to stimulate good ones.
2, Making team sessions more valuable
Fun retrospectives E-book of Caroli & Caetano- it is said to be a book for agile organizations but in fact it is so much more than that! The authors gathered endless types of team interventions from ice breakers till evaluative discussions. You can select exercises you can use for teams to get to learn each other, to get aligned, etc.
3, TED talk of Tom Wujec – Got a problem? First tell me how you make toast
It is a video in which he explains how system thinking works and provides a very simple exercises for it (the toast-making exercise). An idea I have been implementing very often during team sessions.
I have much more but I tried to keep the list short.
Are you looking for something specific? Just send me a mail or message, I am happy to help you if i can.
Have a happy summer!