Creative Thinking For Dummies

by David Cox

Creative thinking made easyBeing creative can be tough - and trying to come up with great ideas under pressure can leave the great ideas under wraps! "Creative Thinking For Dummies" helps you apply creative thinking techniques to everything you touch, whether it's that novel you have inside you or the new business idea you've had that will make you the next hot entrepreneur or anything in between.

"Creative Thinking For Dummies" is a practical, hands-on guide packed with techniques and examples of different ways to think creatively. It covers a range of techniques, including brainstorming, lateral thinking, mind mapping, synectics, drawing and doodling your way to great ideas, meditation and visualization, word and language games, and divergent thinking.See the world in a different way, and realise that you are surrounded by creative inspirationBrainstorm new ideas successfully and try out some lateral thinking exercisesOpen your mind to a new way of thinking and nail down those great ideasDiscover creative thinking techniques using games, words, drawings, and storytellingLet creativity enhance all aspects of your life, whether developing your personal skills, becoming more professionally effective, or using creative thinking techniques to help your children develop their creative minds

You'll soon discover that everybody, including you, has a wealth of creative potential within--you just need to tap into it!

Genres: Nonfiction, Self Help, Psychology

384 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2012

About the author

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See also:
David Cox, accounting
David Cox, history
David Cox, children's writer/illustrator
David Cox, 1783-1859
David Cox*, screenplays and novels
David Cox, study guides for nurses

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Reviews

[David Roberts · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book I read to research this post was Creative Thinking For Dummies which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. This book is about developing your creativity to help with problem solving and to in general come up with good ideas. It uses techniques like mind mapping and it does say to become truly competent at being creative takes 3 years of spending most of the day practicing being creative which is a similar amount of time to learning a musical instrument. Bill Gates the boss at Microsoft apparently frequently uses mind mapping to solve his problems. Apparently Boeing built a 25 foot wide mind map as a construction manual to one of the aircraft they were developing and saved $11 million. Mind mapping is using a picture in the centre that represents the topic and having interrelated branches going out showing how everything in the mind map relates to one another. I'd recommend reading mind mapping for dummies to learn this subject. The human brain thinks in terms of relationships and in most people vision is their predominent sense. I enjoyed reading this book which probably isn't going to make you a creative guru but is well written and will probably help you appreciate your own creativity and realise you are more creative than you realised and trust your abilities more. It also looks at lateral thinking and encourages you to accept bad ideas as part of the thinking process as without these good ideas wouldn't emerge. In many countries with totalitarian regimes creativity and art are discouraged and people are expected to become another cog in the wheel. Just look at Leonardo da Vinci and Thomas Edison to see how important creativity is. Edison famously said creativity is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. It is important that you trust any good ideas you have and follow through in acting on them. I would recommend this book.

[Ramavtar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great insight on creative thinking and how to enhance it.

[Rod Willis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Based on the title, I was anticipating a book that provided a list of things to do with not much of the detail behind why these suggestions might actually work. Well, what a pleasant surprise I have to say. It not only shares ideas hints and tips. It also goes into some of the “why this works” as well.

If you have an interest in the Human way of being and how that effects our creative contribution, this book is well worth reading. It offers much more than Creative Thinking, it offers an insight into being Creative, which in my book is much more than the title had suggested.

[Nazarii Zanoz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Загалом наче нормально, як порадник, але насправді багато із цих порад дуже умовні. І, звісно, цю книжку краще мати у вигляді паперової чи електронної версії, ніж аудіокнижки, аби могти постійно повертатися до ідей, робити собі закладки і т.д. Автор багато покликається на Де Боно, що цілком зрозуміло і радше таки плюс, але загалом все доволі умовно, розмито і з купою повторень, як і належить більшости таких порадників)

[Raman Chopra · Rating 5 out of 5]

To sum up, 'A Great Book'.

If you would like to know more:

I really enjoyed the book. This was my first book on 'Creativity' as a topic in itself and i loved it. I was of the belief that Creativity is a qualitative trait - but this book opened for me the Pandora's box to tons of research done into quantifying, understanding, inducing and practising Creativity.

This book is very beautifully written and introduces a brilliant number of intriguing tools and models to emulate and practise Creativity. It has facts, step-wise instructions, figures, tables, research papers, references to books, history and anything else you can imagine about Creativity. The author is indeed a very well read person himself. He has done a wonderful job of compiling bits and nuggets of a lot of his knowledge on the subject.

I learnt how closely mind mapping and Neuro linguistic Programming are linked with Creativity and how it has been analyzed over the ages.

At times there was some redundancy in the book, references to past or future chapters of the book itself, similar examples used multiple time for the same purpose - which did not diminish the essence in any way, except but to prolong the reading time.

There a lot of exercises for creating a Creative mindset - a lot of stuff i enjoyed.

I would totally recommend the book for everyone i know!! This is must read!

If you have read in this Genre before, great, if you haven't you have to give this book a shot.
This book has inspired and pointed me to many other intriguing books delving into similar subjects and also towards the " - for Dummies" chain.

Again, to sum up - 'A Great Book'.

[Jo Scoble · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely brilliant surprise of a book. So enlightening, engaging, helpful and easy to read. My mind was jumping around with ideas and the information shared was so useful. This book puts my faith back into human ingenuity and innovation for every person on the planet. We are funny organisms and I have happily been justified by this book in declaring myself an ever five-year old, cuz kids really have the best state of creative minds. Even if you don't want to be creative this book will fascinate you. It's taken me a long time to finish it but it's by no means a negative reflection on the book, it's a great book. Up there in my 'recommends' pile, for sure.

[Sadie · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's only a helpful book to those who already believe in the power of their unconsciousness. So if you don't know how important your dreams are, don't bother reading it.