Creative Change: Why We Resist It . . . How We Can Embrace It

by Jennifer Mueller

“This book completely changed the way I think about creative innovation. . . . A must read” (Cal Newport, bestselling author of Deep Work).   Business leaders say they want creativity and need real innovation in order to thrive. But according to startling research from management professor Jennifer Mueller, these same leaders chronically reject creative solutions, even as they profess commitment to innovation.   Mueller’s research reveals that it’s not just CEOs but educators, parents, and other social trendsetters who struggle to accept new and creative ideas. Mueller parses the tough questions these findings raise. Do we all have an inherent prejudice against creative ideas? Can we learn to outsmart this bias?  Creative Change combines analysis of the latest research with practical guidance on how to shift your mindset, and offers a wealth of counterintuitive recommendations to help you embrace the creative ideas you want.   “If we all crave creativity so much, why do we reject new ideas so often? Jen Mueller’s smart new book unravels this puzzle.” —Daniel H. Pink, New York Times–bestselling author of When and Drive   “Mueller, an accomplished scholar in the management field, has developed a well-formulated argument for creativity. Her ideas and research need to be available to academics, business practitioners, and, really, everyone.” —Library Journal

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Self Help

261 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 17, 2017

About the author

Jennifer Mueller earned her PhD in Social and Developmental Psychology at Brandeis University, and has been on the faculty of many top business schools including the Wharton School, Yale School of Management and NYU's Stern School of Business. One of her papers, upon which this book is based, “The Bias Against Creativity,” went viral and was downloaded over 65,000 times—receiving more than 100 media mentions and being described as a “famous study” in TheAtlantic. Jennifer’s work has been featured in many major media outlets including WSJ, NPR, CNN, HBR, The Atlantic, Fortune, Forbes, and Fast Company. Jennifer, a native Californian, is currently an Associate Professor at the University of San Diego.

Reviews

[Caroline Brookfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the focus on the receiving end of creativity in a corporate context. There are so many books on "how" to be creative, and the need for creativity. I found this book refreshing in that it highlights the bias we have against creativity, and how to mitigate your own and a decision maker's bias to find better solutions. Definitely recommend!

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got this as an audiobook and ebook and have listened to the audiobook. It took a long time to do this because the narrator sounds like a computer-generated voice. I knew a lot of the info was useful, but I had to re-listen to several passages many times over. I was in the car, so it didn't matter, just frustrating. I'm glad I got the ebook, so I can go back through it later.

I believe the information will be useful, especially for anyone who has ever tried to drive change in an organization only to find that no one truly wants change (even thought they say they do). There are actual steps explained for changing this mindset, and I'm definitely going to read those sections more thoroughly. Just DON'T bother with the audiobook unless you need to take a nap.

[Stef Garvin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mueller confirms what I've experienced as a creative entrepreneur. People resist creativity. Just like people resist change. We might even long for a creative solution. But our desire to have a proven solution often conflicts with our ability to have those creative solutions be fully realized. Mueller provides strategies for how to push creative change through an organization. My only frustration was, as many of these scholarly approaches to creativity tend to, the book focused on creative change within large organizations rather than on a personal basis. I would be thrilled to see an accompanying book that would address that.

[Brian Hutzell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a bad quick read, but also not exactly what you might expect. Reading the cover and blurbs, one might expect this to be a self-help book on how to become more creative. It is, rather a management guide on how to encourage and handle creativity in a corporate environment. My biggest complaint with the writing is author Mueller’s love of rhetorical questions. Donald Trump supporters could benefit from reading pages 170-173, “The Tricky Relationship Between Leadership and Creativity,” in which Mueller dissects some popular myths about leadership.

[Lexxi · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was required reading for my MBA class. It was decent (and much better than some of the readings from my program). The first half was really interesting. The second half dragged and it felt like she over-explained the ideas. Those chapters could have been halved without it impacting the content. I also don't know if this was throughout the book or just in the last chapter (15 pages), but she kept using "in other words". I counted 7 times and that was just from when I noticed.

[Jerrid Kruse · Rating 3 out of 5]

More about management & leadership in the second half of the book. While the author gets into some of the psychology of resistance early on, it wasn't explored as much as I had hoped. I suspect the author's research articles will be of interest and the book made me want to seek those out.

[Lee Barry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book on the proper framing of the marketing of ideas and innovations within an organization. It could be interesting to the artist as well, when considering the "whys" and "hows" of new ideas.

[Dale · Rating 3 out of 5]

I will certainly use this book in my next future structure/ missions focused operational planning team. There maybe utility in approaching organizational change leveraging the FAB (fit, aha, broaden) framework. Recommend this book to my institutional planning friends.

[Melanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Okay book, but really focused on corporate world. Didn’t feel very relevant to non-profit work.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

High marks for a useful and readable book backed by empirical evidence. Good for those who would wish to more effectively cultivate, manage and implement innovation.

[Leonore · Rating 3 out of 5]

Topic interesting but could have been shorter. Writing boring.

[Aeischeid · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably essential reading for managers in business that demands some type of innovative thinking. I liken it to how anyone in positions of power/authority ought to understand Milgrim's research and it's implications. Anyone in a gatekeeping role within an organization ought to understand how the nature of the role affects how they think and function.

[Kathy Cowie · Rating 4 out of 5]

To be reviewed in the September-October issue of Global Business and Organizational Excellence.

[Pat Dutt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really liked Creative Change and I found the ideas in it to be very useful.

Dr. Mueller knows that most people are afraid of change and fear the unknown. Why should anyone do anything differently if the status quo is working? So how do you convince someone to invest in a new idea? This requires some kind of conversation, and knowing how to talk to people is a big plus. She gives the example of a various signs planted at the Petrified Forest discouraging theft of petrified wood. The sign that said, “Please don’t remove the petrified wood in the park” turned out to be the most effective. A sign that started with, “Many past visitors have removed the petrified wood……” was least effective. She explains why in the book.

In this same chapter (“Overcome others’ bias against creativity”) she describes the idea’s fit (eg, Apple is not IBM), and the AHA strategies of analogy and combination. Analogies and combinations “serve to give your listener a comparison point. But instead of noting that one thing is like the other – like an analogy – combinations serve to emphasize the new element that is created by combining two things that are usually not seen together.” Being creative, then, involves seeing similarities between things that are very different and that can cause a paradigm shift. Aha! Mueller gives the case of how Star Wars was pitched – to 2001—that failed! Then there was this Kodak engineer, Steve Sasson, who pitched digital photography to Kodak and failed to convince them of his idea.

But it’s not enough to have a great idea, and successfully pitch it, you also need to have some sense of how the idea will work in the modern world. The example she gives is the failure of the electric car to dominate in Israel.

This book contains a lot of really good practical strategies , for instance : how do you brainstorm?
And there are some eye-openers: what happens when you change maternal leave to parental leave? And some ideas to contemplate: if we declare in schools unimportant from day one, you diminish the importance of creativity from day one.

And what about those sticky things -- that no one would ever ever use? Oh yeah: Post-its.