Professor Sanjay Bakshi teaches MBA students “Behavioral Finance & Business Valuation (BFBV)” and “Financial Shenanigans & Governance” at MDI, Gurgaon. He was kind enough to put together a list of reference material for Farnam Street readers (books/videos) that he uses on the subject of creativity.
An illustrated deck of 64 creative thinking strategies that will whack you out of habitual thought patterns and enable you to look at your life and actions in a fresh way. Use the cards alone or with others to seek innovative solutions to issues.
Each card in the deck packs a two-sided creative punch. One side has a provocative insight about innovation from Heraclitus, the world’s first creativity teacher. These 2,500 year old ideas – such as “You can’t step into the same river twice,” “Everything flows,” “That which opposes produces a benefit,” and “Dogs bark at what they don’t understand” -will give you a fresh perspective. The other side contains a creativity strategy inspired by each insight.
Books:
Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation
The printing press, the pencil, the flush toilet, the battery—these are all great ideas. But where do they come from? What kind of environment breeds them? What sparks the flash of brilliance? How do we generate the groundbreaking ideas that push forward our lives, our society, our culture? Steven Johnson’s answers are revelatory as he identifies the seven key patterns behind genuine innovation, and traces them across time and disciplines. From Darwin and Freud to the halls of Google and Apple, Johnson investigates the innovation hubs throughout modern time and pulls out applicable approaches and commonalities that seem to appear at moments of originality. What he finds gives us both an important new understanding of the roots of innovation and a set of useful strategies for cultivating our own creative breakthroughs.
A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future
The future belongs to a different kind of person with a different kind of mind: artists, inventors, storytellers-creative and holistic “right-brain” thinkers whose abilities mark the fault line between who gets ahead and who doesn’t.
Disciplined Dreaming: A Proven System to Drive Breakthrough Creativity
Linkner distills his years of experience in business and jazz — as well as hundreds of interviews with CEOs, entrepreneurs, and artists — into a 5-step process that will make creativity easy for you and your organization. The methodology is simple, backed by proven results.
Describing something by relating it to another thing is the essence of metaphorical thought. It is one of the oldest activities of humankind—and one of the most impressive when done skillfully. Throughout history, many masters of metaphor have crafted observations that are so spectacular they have taken up a permanent residence in our minds.
Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently
Though indispensable, true iconoclasts are few and far between. In Iconoclast, neuroscientist Gregory Berns explains why. He explores the constraints the human brain places on innovative thinking, including fear of failure, the urge to conform, and the tendency to interpret sensory information in familiar ways.
At a time when America is seeking ways to sustain its innovative edge, and when societies around the world are trying to build digital-age economies, Jobs stands as the ultimate icon of inventiveness and applied imagination. He knew that the best way to create value in the twenty-first century was to connect creativity with technology. He built a company where leaps of the imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering.
Einstein: His Life and Universe (by Walter Isaacson)
How did his mind work? What made him a genius? Isaacson’s biography shows how his scientific imagination sprang from the rebellious nature of his personality. His fascinating story is a testament to the connection between creativity and freedom.
Presentations:
Ted talks by Hans Rosling
Stats that reshape your worldview (2006)
New insights on poverty(2007)
New facts and stunning data visuals (2009)
Let my dataset change your mindset (2009)
Asia’s rise — how and when (2009)
Global population growth, box by box (2010)
The good news of the decade? (2010)
The magic washing machine (2011)
Religions and babies (2012)
Steve Jobs Presentations (some examples below)
Apple Keynote — The “1984” Ad Introduction (1983)
Stanford Commencement Speech (2005)
iPhone Presentation (2007)
iPad Presentation (2010)
Steve Jobs Presents to the Cupertino City Council (2011)
Steven Johnson’s Ted Talk
People often credit their ideas to individual “Eureka!” moments. But Steven Johnson shows how history tells a different story. His fascinating tour takes us from the “liquid networks” of London’s coffee houses to Charles Darwin’s long, slow hunch to today’s high-velocity web.
Elizabeth Gilbert’s Ted talk on “A Different Way to Think About Creative Genius”
The author of Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert muses on the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses — and shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person “being” a genius, all of us “have” a genius. It’s a funny, personal and surprisingly moving talk.
Tim Brown’s Ted talk on “The powerful link between creativity and play”
Tim Brown is the CEO of the “innovation and design” firm IDEO — taking an approach to design that digs deeper than the surface.
TEDTalks : Creativity, fulfillment and flow – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2004)
Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi asks, “What makes a life worth living?” Noting that money cannot make us happy, he looks to those who find pleasure and lasting satisfaction in activities that bring about a state of “flow.”
Ken Robinson’s TED talks
Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson challenges the way we’re educating our children. He champions a radical rethink of our school systems, to cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence.
schools kill creativity (2006)
Bring on the learning revolution! (2010)
Changing education paradigms 2010