THINKING CREATIVELY AT WORK

- PREMILLA D CRUZ

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SYNOPSIS: Thinking Creatively at Work: A Sourcebook moves away from linear and static notions of creativity to put forth a dynamic, comprehensive and contextualized understanding of the subject. It captures process and outcome dimensions, integrating multiple viewpoints from cognitive psychology, while strengthening intra-organizational contexts. The book offers a graded, holistic training program that fills a gap felt by management educators and trainers. It encompasses the mandates of the deficit and barrier models of creativity training, addressing techniques, facilitators and inhibitors. The program ensures lasting changes in the individual's cognitive abilities and integrates these with his existing skills.

Product Description Review It is a source book and the author has made a detailed study of work done by various scientists in understanding creativity and how it works. The book traces the complete history of creativity in its role of helping organisations to survive and further progress and will be an asset to both organisations and business students. (Dawn)

Thinking Creatively at Work by Premilla D`Cruz can be a good source of practical guide to the HR managers, trainers, faculties of B-Schools and Organization Development (OD) practitioners to develop and operate training programs for organizations keen to maintain a competitive edge. The book is contextualized in the domain of management providing instructors with a detailed program that covers creativity techniques, facilitators and inhibitors. (South Asian Journal of Management) [This book] offers a graded, holistic training programme that fills a gap felt by management educators and trainers. The book will serve as a useful guide for the faculty of business schools, HR managers, trainers and organisation development practitioners.

(Mail Today) Redefining the problem provides the opportunity to look at the situation from different viewpointsthe initial way in which one looks at a problem is biased by past experience, learning, knowledge and habit, and redefinition permits alternative points of view to emerge, often leading to a holistic understandingUseful guide to kick-start creativity. (Business Line) About the Author Premilla DCruz is Associate Professor of OB at IIM Ahmedabad. A PhD in Social Sciences from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, Dr DCruzs research areas are emotions in organizations, self and identity, organizational control, and ICTs and organizations. She has published Thinking Creatively at Work: A Sourcebook (2008), Family Care in HIV/AIDS: Exploring Lived Experience (2004) and In Sickness and in Health: The Family Experience of HIV/AIDS in India (2003), in addition to numerous international papers and presentations. Dr DCruz has earlier held faculty appointments at IIT Kanpur and IIM Kozhikode. At IIM Ahmedabad, she teaches Micro OB and Creativity. With rapid changes in technology and global competition the success of many organisations has become progressively more dependent on their ability to bring innovative products to market. Ultimately, however, innovation depends on the generation of creative, new ideas. Accordingly, the literature bearing on the nature of creativity is reviewed to identify the conditions that influence innovation. Author of Thinking Creatively At Work: A Sourcebook , Premilla D'Cruz is assistant professor of organisational behaviour at Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. This book is the outcome of her work as an academic in the field of creativity and cognition, and of her experiences as a trainer in creative thinking. According to her belief, creativity is critical for organisational progress and survival, even more so in the contemporary economic context where organisations are facing a wider array of competitive pressures than ever before. Businesses believe that they must be constantly changing and innovating, reinventing themselves at internet speed to stay ahead of technological changes, new competitors around the globe and the continually shifting demands of customers and potential employees. The book will serve as a

useful guide for business schools, HR managers, trainers and organisation development practitioners. Excerpt: Having understood the basic concepts associated with creativity as detailed in Part I of this book, the stage is now set to move into the training component included in Part II. The training component comprises of five modules to be executed as workshops, each of which should be held on a single day over five consecutive weeks. Each workshop lasts for about six hours and is followed up with takehome-assignments that provide participants with practice in creative thinking. The introductory note included in each module may be given to the participants at the end of the workshop as a reading hand-out. Some cases have also been included in this book for the purpose of applying and learning the use of creative thinking techniques. Offering participants a context in which they can test the limits of the acceptable, without risk of feelings of guilt, ridicule and failure, would foster in them the courage to deviate from what everyone else is doing.

Prologue PART I. Understanding the Sphere of Creativity PART II. Getting Oriented Module 1. Initiating Ideation Module 2. Thinking Laterally Module 3. Relayering Module 4. Fantasy Trials Module 5. Essential Brainstorming