Creative Acts for Curious People: How to Think, Create, and Lead in Unconventional Ways

by Sarah Stein Greenberg, Stanford d.school (Contributor), David Kelley (Contributor)(Foreword)

A vibrant illustrated resource of captivating and practical ways to help you bring creative approaches to any challenge you face, from Stanford University's world-renowned d.school.

'CREATIVE ACTS FOR CURIOUS PEOPLE' contains more than 80 assignments hand-picked from the d.school's history by executive director Sarah Stein Rosenberg form some of the world's most inventive and unconventional minds, including d.school and IDEO founder David Kelley, 'Readymade' magazine founder Grace Hawthorne, innovative choreographer Aleta Hayes, Google chief innovation evangelist Frederik Pferdt, and more.

Genres: Design, Nonfiction, Business, Psychology, Art, Self Help, Personal Development

304 pages, Paperback

First published September 21, 2021

Reviews

[ZB · Rating 5 out of 5]

A sincerely excellent book that blew my head apart. I read it because I wanted to learn how to become an idea person & came out of it with 100 techniques for creativity, accessible design, leadership—and the realization that I’ve been using all the wrong parts of my brain. I love design stuff like this! It makes me feel alive! My brain has been asleep too long. I’ve recommended this book to everyone human I know. It’s so rich with how-tos and imagination and just cool shit. Dang.

[Karen Cohn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a how-to manual, covering a wide variety topics that all fit under the heading of creativity. The activities are grouped in to categories, and could be used one of two ways: as a path to creativity within the category, or by jumping around from one topic to another as suits the needs of the reader. These activities are self-paced, and can be completed individually or in groups, it was authored by the executive director of Stanford's d.school, a program designed to help people find their own creativity. Think of this as a workbook or a manual, and use in whatever way you desire to help you unlock your creative potential.

[Marloes Oostindie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tjokvol slime creatieve oefeningen! Heel chill! En najaa dit boek heb je natuurlijk nooit echt uit :).

[Dil Nawaz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing book for Designers, Innovators, Thinkers, Engineers, or whatever you do.

Creativity needs in every field of our life. This book contains 80+ practical exercises like how to generate ideas, how to make a prototype etc. 2 pages of colorful articles. The author showed the work of some of the best students of Stanford University's d.school.

This book is 100% practical. Some of my Favourite exercises are

1- The banana challenge

2- ABC sketching

3- A day in the life

4- Tell your granddad

5- Micro-Mindfulness exercises

and 75+ more

This is like you spent 1 year in Stanford University's creative school. Every exercise is like you are attending an official workshop. Many exercises are for groups. The book is expensive here but worth your money. 10 Stars from me. Recommended.

Dil Nawaz
The Lion Studios
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[Allison Griffiths · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun and extremely practical. If you run your home, a team, a business this is an extremely engaging primer to communication, teamwork, problem solving, rollout of new concepts, tools. Its short artwork centric bursts of content that drive your creative juices in a productive motion. If you manage a team, or work on a creative team... you need to read this. Huge appreciation for the production of the book its a piece of art. Super neat.

[Mackenzie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good for a genre I don’t love

[Brian Meyer · Rating 3 out of 5]

The mediocre rating I've assigned to this book has less to do with its contents or structure and more to do with my preconceived notion that was a traditional self-help book focusing on creativity. It's essentially a workbook filled with a smorgasbord of exercises — certainly not a tome that is intended for casual readers to devour cover-to-cover. In fact, one of the introductory sections encourages folks to pick and choose chapters that interest them. Having said that, I found some useful and thought-provoking concepts in the chapters I explored.

[Alyssa Foll · Rating 5 out of 5]

A spectacular book filled with creative exercises and prompts. My book is filled with sticky flags marking the design exercises I'm going to try with my team. Highly recommended. This is a book you will reference over and over.

[La'Tonya Miles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book! going to use it for a design thinking grad seminar

[Rich B · Rating 4 out of 5]

A selection of lessons and essays from the team behind the d.school creative faculty at Stanford. You get 81 different tasks broken into clear related sections, plus some essays around key topics and some practical exercises at the end to put all your learning into practice. On the whole a good read for anyone interested in creativity and design.

The only real challenge is that is with so many writers and contributors, it’s hard to keep the tone and quality of the writing consistent. The editor does a pretty decent job of it, and most of it reads well, but there’s the occasional rogue section which sounds waffle-y and preachy. Not enough to spoil the book by any means, but stopping it from being an even better read.

However, there’s more than enough interesting, insightful and impactful ideas in here to make it well worth reading. It’s such a broad topic, and there’s a very good level of thinking behind the lessons it tries to teach. Some of the early lessons feel overly simplistic, but they’re aimed at total beginners. And there’s plenty more stretching exercises the further you go, so there should be at least something for every level of expertise. Plus, if you read the hard copy, it’s beautifully designed with some excellent supporting diagrams, illustrations and visual aids.

There was unsurprisingly a bit of a California vibe to some of the examples, and it’s even noted you may need to adjust some of the ideas to fit your own cultural context. But overall, it was fun to read, with lots to think about and definitely worth a read if this topic's something you’re interested in.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was recommended to me as a good exercise book for stimulating creativity and getting out of a doldrums. I might have noticed this was being marketed as a business book and realized I was not the intended audience, but did not. I'm a solo creative, doing fiber arts design, writing articles, and occasionally doing layout work for publications. I work quietly and alone in my studio, occasionally asking people for feedback, but generally only a few people at a time. Essentially all of the exercises in this book were aimed at teams, not individuals.

A lot of the exercises promoting engagement made me wince to think about; they were generally loud and boisterous silly games forcing a lot of group interaction. The author was clearly enamored of them, but they are the sort of thing that are sensory overloads for me and many other folks.

I have in the past been involved in software development, and some of the things in this book were useful in that context. I assume they would also be useful in other contexts where you have teams of people working together to find novel solutions to problems, or discovering new problems to solve. There were a few on giving and receiving feedback that were excellent, and I have done similar things when I had a leadership role and was teaching teams how to conduct user testing.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sarah Stein Greenberg's "Creative Acts for Curious People" isn't what I was expecting. Stein Greenberg's book isn't so much about creativity or curiosity as it is a handbook of group activities (there are a few individual ones as well) that are built to develop your creativity. Stein Greenberg is at Stanford's d.school--which is an interdisciplinary learning hub at Stanford to explore creativity. Perhaps because of that my expectations were much higher than what I got in the book. Or perhaps I just needed to take the book for what it is and appreciate its merits on that front. But I still think I would have loved to have the book grounded in at least some deeper level of reflection on creativity. Oh, and unsurprisingly, the book is what you would expect in terms of its (undefended) ideological assumptions. That wasn't as big an obstacle to me, but could be frustrating for other readers.

In short, if you are looking for a handbook for dozens of creative exercises to stretch your team, this is the place to go. Otherwise, I would pass.

For more reviews see thebeehive.live.

[Jung]

Design is all about problem-solving and creative action. To improve your design skills, you have to develop competence in four key areas: thinking, learning, doing, and feeling. By maintaining curiosity and keeping an open mind, you’ll boost your ability to solve complex challenges in your own life and the world around you.

Actionable advice:

Explore the best conditions for learning.

Another tool used by the d.school is called Learn How You Learn. Think about the impactful turning points in your life where you gained new insight on a topic. This could be in a formal learning setting like school, but also in your personal or professional life. For each moment, write down a list of five features of the experience: for instance, who you were with, where you were, and what went on around you at the time. Review this set of attributes. Once you’ve identified the best conditions for how you learn, think about whether you can recreate them.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really great compilation of ideas and instructions for ways to work with teams. This includes getting to know you things, working together things, and feedback things. While there's lots of text, I found it was an incredibly easy read, and the instructions were so simple. Some of these I'd heard of, but much of this was knew. My wheels are now spinning as I think of ways I could utilize these. If you're working in an educational or developing some kind of anything space and/or working with collaborative teams, this is a really great read!

[Roger L · Rating 3 out of 5]

I will echo what a few others have said. If you're looking for a book about INDIVIDUALLY being more creative, this probably isn't the book for you. It spends most of its time focused on group exercises and on designing people-related systems. It should have been called "Training for Collaborative Action when Designing People-Related Systems" (OK, you think of something more succinct!). So this has value but may not be at all what you're expecting especially if you're, say, working solo in the arts.

[Chris Leuchtenburg · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a little unfair to give this book just three stars, because I didn't get all that much out of it. But the format seems intended to attract the lay reader, like me, but it is more appropriate for young consultants wrestling with the challenges of coming up with creative solutions to difficult problems. It's probably quite a good book for them or for their professors searching for new classroom exercises.

[AcademicEditor · Rating 4 out of 5]

To be honest, I felt this book was a little all over the place at first, but it found its stride. The principles are helpful for those of us that have to be creative even when feeling burnt out or uninspired. The design-school inspiration is definitely evident in the illustrations.

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to review a temporary digital ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

[Alisha Foster]

This was an interesting book. I got about halfway through and liked the exercises I read. I think I am looking for something a bit different in terms of help with my creativity - I thought I needed help coming up with ideas, but the resistance I felt to this book told me the ideas are already inside me and just need help coming out. I'm going to try the book "Embrace Your Weird" next and we'll see if that's more of a fit.

[Doni · Rating 5 out of 5]

I appreciated how the authors offered several non-linear paths through the book since creation is often a non-linear process. That being said, I ended up reading the book from start to finish because I wanted to make sure I didn't miss anything! Several of the exercises made me uncomfortable which is probably good because it means they were pushing boundaries. I love ideas and this book was all about making and changing ideas. A valuable reference!

[Annie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointed with this - I was looking for exercises that could be applicable to different work/leadership contexts. Many of the exercises in this book are not very practical and I'm unclear how they could be widely implemented or applied. I'll come back to this book later to see if I feel differently.

[Nicole · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was excited for this one, there was obviously a lot of time and effort put into the research and creating the activities. This book is highly rated and has won a few awards. Unfortunately, I personally couldn't find much practical application of the activities outlined. I can't imagine even one of the activities outlined in the book as something to do with my co-workers.

[Mae · Rating 4 out of 5]

This manual provided a good amount of practices and methods to learn by doing. The numbers of practices are a bit overwhelming and I need some time to process the information and start to work on the topics. It’s also an interesting process of reading this book that I validated myself as learning by doing type of person.

[Morgan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was such a fascinating book to flip though! I haven't tried any of the tasks and didn't read every word, but I still felt some inspiration. Definitely geared toward those in design/production type fields.

[Monique Van hest · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dit boek krijg ik niet ‘uit’ want ik gebruik het als een inspiratiebron. Het is mijn nieuwe ‘bijbel’ om lessen, bijeenkomsten, coachingsessie anders aan te zwengelen. Samen met de Kunst van het waarnemen overigens. Ook al zo’n fijn boek.

[Kevin Demel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found the suggestions in this book to be different from the way I create ideas. I look to compare items and find concepts I can transfer to other items. A lot of suggestions in this book I see for using on processes with teams.

[Olivia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this! It has a lot of great ideas for activities for creative teams and individuals, and I appreciated how they were all organized in the book. I'm definitely going to buy a copy for myself so I can keep referring to it!

[Sascha Funk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome book. Very engaging, motivational, great cases, and lovely illustrations.

[Patti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots and lots of interesting exercises to get the creative juices flowing. These are most applicable for changing mindsets in a work environment. I love what the Stanford d. school is doing.

[Tanya · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many great pieces of food for thought to get your creative/design mind engaged.

[Mychael-Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

I tried listening to this book and it’s not made for that format. It is however a great resource book that I would be happy to have on my shelf - these exercises would be great for me.