Creative Thinking for Business Leaders ─ How to Accomplish Successful Ideation Through Creative Resilience

Creative thinking, which the most successful companies that develop the most innovative products rely on, has evolved into to creative resilience – the technique to persevere with problems and solve them faster. The approach will help business leaders create both the physical and mental agility to build an operating environment that supports successful ideation and adopts different ways of approaching complex problems. The reader will become more 'creatively resilient' and flexible to adopt non-habitual modes of thought that move them towards creative solutions that they can apply to very specific business and technical challenges.

The basic framework is called 'Stormblending' – a four-phased approach that focuses on a collection of different tools that can be applied to deliver the value from each phase. The four phases are presented in the context of the full product development lifecycle. They are:

1. Immersion (Ethnographically inspired Contextual Inquiry/Voice of customer).
2. Representation (How to best represent and frame specific problems and opportunities to create the right conditions for successful idea generation).
3. Divergent thinking techniques to disrupt and reframe the problem as the reader will learn how to adopt non-habitual modes of thought.
4. Emergence and Discovery (this when most we experience the 'A-Ha!' moment)

Traditionally, most companies make the mistake of stressing ideation only without thought to how the ideas are then prioritised, built upon, and turned into a reality for profitable growth. Practitioners and business professionals, from start-ups to global corporations, will gain an initial overview on creativity, the purpose of ideation, and what it means to translate insights into innovation in real-time – in the boardroom, during periods of introspection, or during the facilitation of cross functional teams and workshops that demand the specialist skills provided in this book.

Ben is an Award Winning Chartered Engineer, Chartered Product Designer and Chartered Environmentalist for Sustainable Product Design; the first Design Professional to receive all three Charterships, Recognised by HRH Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh, during a reception at St James’s Palace, and leads the Learning Academy for 3M’s international technical community, holds a PhD in Design Strategy and Innovation, and a Master’s Degree in Engineering Product Design.

He has led, developed and contributed towards the commercialisation of many technologies estimated to have generated in excess of $200M sales and has worked for both start-up and Fortune 100 companies, across a broad range of technologies and research methods that comprise computational intelligence, embedded software, electronic hardware, design ethnography and mechanical product design.

Ben has specialist experience across the whole product development lifecycle, with expertise in creative thinking and ideation that he is now in the fortunate position to share with others, coach other design professionals and apply on a daily basis. This is of particular interest to those looking to manage front end innovation and lead cross functional design teams, handle crucial conversations and persevere with complex human centred design challenges.