Creativity Challenge: How We Can Recapture American Innovation

by K.H. Kim

American creativity has steadily declined since 1990. That disturbing trend recently came to light through the work of leading educational psychologist KH Kim, a recognized expert in creativity assessment. In this insightful and inspiring book, Kim discovers the causes of the decrease in creativity and proposes methods of recapturing American creativity in education, in industry, and throughout every sector of society. Through the life stories of innovators, Kim debunks the assumption that creative people must be born with innate talents. She shows how parents, educational methods, and cultures shaped innovators' creative expression. As her research clearly indicates, cultural climates and attitudes (including over-reliance on standardized testing) often work against innovation unless creativity is deliberately grown and developed. Culminating over twenty years of extensive research, Kim has devised original models to identify creativity in people and organizations and help it to blossom. Gardening metaphors illustrate simple but powerful steps to transform creative potential into innovation. She emphasizes practical steps to cultivate creative climates (environment) in schools, in homes, and at work; nurture creative attitudes (personality) toward learning, work, and life; and apply creative thinking skills. Kim's models for creativity are complemented with evidence-based methods to learn and practice creative skills in everyday life.

354 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 13, 2016

Reviews

[Ryan QuickReads · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dude literally has a chapter called "Are Jews really more creative than Asians are"

[Ron Scheese · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inspiring research on creative environments

Just finished "The Creativity Challenge" by K H Kim.

Recommended to me as background for my work in higher education, I found the concepts and principles inspiring to ignite creative environments in all walks of life. Yes there is a high focus on parenting and education models, but the concepts to nurture creativity and innovation can also apply in a business environment, healthcare, etc.

The author shares her research in an effective manner. I will admit I was struggling with her plant metaphor early in the book as she outlined the model. But as she progressed to examine each concept and stage, she used the lives of Einstein, O'Keefe, Curie, Jobs and Mandela to demonstrate the innovation principles. Her digging into gender bias as well as religious upbringing models with thorough research enhanced her conclusions.

It is an academic read and it is filled with interesting ideas to nurture and address in your sphere of influence. Definitely worth checking out

[Iris Eisenman · Rating 1 out of 5]

Interesting ideas, but basically 100 pages too long. Absolutely bloated.
Weird stuff:
- The author generally only discusses the social norms and parenting styles of Americans and East Asians as if the entire rest of the world is irrelevant
- this author said that the Holocaust survivors had "psychological growth," and not just negative impacts from their experiences? Kind of a weird take and barely related
- the text would be like "see Fig 5.4" but Fig 5.4 is just a cartoon drawing of a cactus with a moustache wearing a tutu?