“Tina invites us inside her Stanford University course to reveal that we all have creative potential waiting to be unleashed.” — Ori Brafman, coauthor of Sway and Click “In a world that’s in constant flux, creativity and innovation are essential qualities for successful executives and industry-leading companies. Tina has shown that we all have the ability to mobilize our creative spirit.” — Chip Conley, Founder of Joie de Vivre Hospitality and Author of Emotional Equations “Who said creativity can’t be taught? It can, and Tina Seelig has done it! She has created a new model, the Innovation Engine, that will change the way you think.” — Steve Blank, entreprenuer and author of The Startup Owners Manual In this groundbreaking work, Tina has codified her years of teaching at Stanford and proves that anyone can be creative. — Nancy Duarte, CEO and author of Resonate Tina has shattered the misconception that you can’t increase creativity. In this book, she presents breakthrough ideas on how to understand and boost your ability to innovate. — Guy Kawasaki, author of Enchantment and former chief evangelist of Apple Tina Seelig has written a provocative field guide to 21st century creativity, with her energy and enthusiasm bursting through on every page. We all could use a little extra spark of creativity, and this book helps show the way. — Tom Kelley, author of The Art of Innovation “Few people have done as much to champion innovative thinking as Tina Seelig.” — David Kelley, Founder IDEO “Tina Seelig is one of the most creative and inspiring teachers at Stanford.” — Robert Sutton, Stanford University Professor and author The No-Asshole Rule “Tina is the most inspirational creativity voice I know.” — Geoffrey Moore, Author, Crossing the Chasm, Dealing with Darwin “Seelig is a sharp observer and a gentle and thoughtful writer.” — Miami Herald “Tina Seelig has written a powerful and practical book, jam packed with keen insights for unleashing creativity in yourself and others.” — Peter Sims, author of Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries “ inGenius is a fascinating blueprint for any company that’s serious about creating an environment where new ideas can thrive, and many of Seelig’s students doubtless go on to do precisely that.” — Fortune Magazine Seelig demonstrates that creativity and experimentation are both personal mindsets and values in organizations. inGenius acts as a spark plug for managers and entrepreneurs who want to capitalize on the creativity in their organizations. — Library Journal “Many of us believe that we’re either born with creativity or we’re not. Tina Seelig, author of inGENIUS: A Crash Course on Creativity , and award-winning educator at Stanford University, says that’s wrong: Creativity can be easily taught and learned.” — USA Weekend Internationally bestselling author and award-winning Stanford University educator Tina Seelig has taught creativity to the best and brightest students at Stanford and to business leaders around the world. With inGenius she expertly decodes creativity, revealing an approach that everyone can use to enhance their own creative genius. In today's world, innovation and creative problem solving are more important than ever to succeed. For many of us, however, this process is a mystery. Whether we are attempting to generate fresh ideas or struggling with problems with no solutions in sight, the innovative spark is out of reach. inGenius offers a revolutionary new model, the Innovation Engine, which explains how creativity is generated on the inside and how it is influenced by the outside world. Describing the variables that work together to catalyze or inhibit our creative abilities, Seelig provides a set of tools we can each use right away to radically enhance our own ingenuity as well as that of our colleagues, teams, organizations, and communities. Seelig's groundbreaking work reveals that creativity is an endless renewable resource we can tap into at any time. It is as natural as breathing, and just as necessary for leading a successful and fulfilling life. Tina Seelig earned her Ph.D. in neuroscience from Stanford University Medical School and is Professor of the Practice in the Department of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford's School of Engineering and executive director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. She is the international bestselling author of What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20 and inGenius: A Crash Course on Creativity . In 2009, Seelig was awarded the prestigious Gordon Prize from the National Academy of Engineering for her pioneering work in engineering education. Follow her on Twitter at @tseelig. Read more
Features & Highlights
Imaginative. Innovative. Ingenious. These words describe the visionaries we all respect and admire. And they can describe you, too. Contrary to common belief, creativity is not a gift some of us are born with. It is a skill that all of us can learn. International bestselling author and award-winning Stanford University educator Tina Seelig has worked with some of the business world’s best and brightest, who are now among the decision-makers at companies such as Google, Genentech, IBM, and Cisco. In
inGenius
she expertly demystifies creativity, offering a set of tools and guidelines that anyone can use. A fantastic resource for everyone wanting to achieve their ambitions, and for readers of Jason Fried’s
Rework
, and Seth Godin’s
Poke the Box
.
Customer Reviews
Rating Breakdown
★★★★★
60%
(249)
★★★★
25%
(104)
★★★
15%
(62)
★★
7%
(29)
★
-7%
(-29)
Most Helpful Reviews
★★★★★
5.0
AHPCFVWVVIWGYA3CJ626...
✓ Verified Purchase
short and effective
The basic goal of this book is to explore creativity through a particular model that Prof. Seelig discusses fairly thoroughly in the last chapters of the book. She calls the model the "innovation engine", and discusses it in terms of three attributes, each attribute having a dual character, partly subjective and partly objective. These dual pairs are "knowledge-resources", "attitude-culture" and "imagination-habitat".
With this general model, her principal interest is in applying it to what one might call the "American" or "entrepreneurial" character. This character is recognizable in terms of its focus on goals, competition, image, success, and rewards. Although there are other applications she makes for her innovation engine, she develops, through anecdote and practical suggestions, this attention to "entrepreneurship".
At the beginning of each chapter, she clearly states the theme and focus of the chapter. Following this, she supplies interesting and attractive anecdotes to illustrate the theme, and then at the end of the chapter summarizes the theme clearly. Each chapter has just a few clearly-defined goals, so as to make this approach effective.
As an example, the chapter that emphasizes the importance of experimentation is called "Move Fast - Break Things". At the end of just the first paragraph of that chapter, she registers the theme with outstanding clarity, with the last sentence of the paragraph consisting of a very apropos quote from a scientist: "An experiment is a question which science poses to Nature, and a measurement is a recording of Nature's answer". She then gives a discussion of using experimentation in education, providing an example of a comparison between experimental styles of two groups of young students, who are, incidentally and very cleverly, themselves part of an experiment. She pursues her discussion with several more examples, all very interesting and poignant. There are nice sharp breaks between each anecdote so that one can easily grasp the points she is making with them as the chapter progresses. In the course of these sections, she tries to draw our attention to how the examples or anecdotes apply to different aspects of the "innovation engine". She closes, in the final paragraph, with a nice summary of the chapter, and another pithy quote, this time from Henry Ford: "Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently".
Overall, this is a superbly written and organized book, which anyone can appreciate, whether or not one feels connected to the "entrepreneurial" focus. The "innovation engine" is a very useful model, and one that is worth taking into account seriously in considering the nature and fostering of creativity. Prof. Seelig opens our eyes extremely well to the power of this model by a very efficient and engaging account, through numerous examples. I strongly recommend this book for anyone interested in creativity.
9 people found this helpful
★★★★★
5.0
AF7QZ37YDJVA7DSCAVPO...
✓ Verified Purchase
How and why the tools and techniques of creative thinking are as essential to invention as the scientific method is to discovery
There are six components that comprise what Tina Seelig characterizes as an "Innovation Engine." Three are internal: information that becomes knowledge (fuel), imagination (a catalytic converter that transforms knowledge into new ideas), and attitude (a spark that ignites the Engine, setting it in motion). All three internal components are essential and interdependent. Seelig suggests that there are also three external components: resources (a community's assets), habitats (physical locations within which the Engine functions at peak performance), and culture (shared beliefs, values, and behaviors of the given community). As I read the Introduction in which Seelig briefly discusses the Engine, I immediately thought of an orchestra and chorus, comprised of world-class talent led by a great conductor, who perform Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Each of her Engine's components has a counterpart within the structure of a symphony orchestra in combination with its score and venue.
These are among the passages in the book that caught my eye:
o The "Theory of Inventive Problem Solving" or TRIZ (the Russian acronym) methodology (Pages 50-51)
o A two-by-two creativity/pressure matrix (106-108)
o Habitats that simulate or inhibit creativity (128-131)
o Edward de Bono's "Six Thinking Hats" model/exercise (128-131)
o Creating a habitat that encourages and supports risk taking and experimentation (160-163)
o Tapping into and activating strong emotional engagement (179-180)
o Précis: Knowledge, Imagination, and Attitude (185-189)
I commend Tina Seelig on immediately establishing a direct, personal rapport with her reader as she begins to provide a wealth of information, insights, and counsel within eleven chapters. She then sustains that rapport throughout her narrative. Presumably many others will feel (as I did) that she wrote this book specifically for them. When concluding the book, she observes, "You hold the key to your Innovation Engine and have creative genius waiting to be unleashed. By tapping into this natural resource you have the power to overcome challenges and generate opportunities of all dimensions. Your ideas - big and small - are the critical starting point for innovations that propel us forward. Without creativity, we are trapped in a world that is not just stagnant, but one that slips backward. As such, we are each responsible for inventing the future. Turn the key."
5 people found this helpful
★★★★★
5.0
AEKDWTWTIWWSHUS3V3HZ...
✓ Verified Purchase
A must-read for EVERYONE!
inGenius is probably the best book you will ever read on creativity. It addresses a belief that I have had all my life, that creativity is in everyone. Given the opportunity, the nurturing, and the exposure, any child can develop some artistic/creative talent that can continue on throughout life. It doesn't even matter what materials one uses--a piece of chalk, sand, discarded socks, or even trash--the mind has the ability to come up with all sorts of ways to invent new and inventive uses for things, completely outside the box.
As the executive director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program at Stanford University School of Engineering, Tina Seelig illustrates with example after example that there is a creative potential lying dormant in everyone. And those of us who are challenged to think beyond what we may perceive as limits will often be surprised at how inventive we really can be. As she writes: "With enhanced creativity, instead of problems you see potential, instead of obstacles you see opportunities, and instead of challenges you see a chance to create breakthrough solutions."
This is not a book only for artists. It is a valuable resource for everyone, and I can't stress "everyone" enough. If you are a writer, a mathematician, a sign painter, a chef, a teacher, or if the only "creative" act you do is a crossword puzzle, this book is for you!
4 people found this helpful
★★★★★
5.0
AGLNRGBUVFQX2XFH7LOR...
✓ Verified Purchase
'inGenius" is, well.... :)
Short review: Read this. It works.
Long review: As Tina points out, little of this is new... but for reasons that escape me, we don't use them. (Subject for her next book?) I have known Tina for a long time, possibly since we were both 12? If there is someone more sharing in this arena, I want to meet them. As you read this, you also see the sheer joyousness that pervades everything she does in person. (Tina, it may have taken a long time to write, but you capture your own voice brilliantly.)
Recently, I had an experience using what I learned from Tina (and what you will learn from this book). I get asked constantly to do workshops & talks, etc. on the learn startup model. I seem to do these everywhere; they're great fun and visibly move the needle in terms of changing the participants' mindsets. But to "do" lean well requires a lot of nimble, often sideways thinking by participants (and their facilitator).
Industrial-strength brainstorming is often essential but most people have very odd notions about brainstorming, some even dysfunctional. So how do you break the Bad Brainstorming script? :) I remember at one of my first REE conferences, Tina asked us to brainstorm with two key ingredients: 1) we were to applaud whatever someone said, no matter what and 2) we had to be *standing*. The impact is amazing simply from the act of standing with a bunch of other people while we got, well, goofy.
Flash forward to that recent lean startup workshop. The conditions were suboptimal, people were cranky and people were drawing blank after blank. I got them to grudgingly stand up & do a Tina-style brainstorm. They really hated the standing up. It was like pulling teeth until I remembered something from that REE conference. "Just say something incredibly stupid to get us going." We were good at stupid, LOL, but when it came around to Mr #1 Crankypants, the first half of what he said managed to be deeply, remarkably asinine. But the second half was so out there that.. .nobody clapped for a second. Because it was so bloody *brilliant* ; it actually sliced the Gordian Knot that someone was facing with their business model*. None of us would EVER have broken the frame in that way.
* If that business ever gets launched, I'd better invite Tina to the ribbon-cutting! :)
And that is but one relatively small piece of what "InGenius" brings you. I have learned from other creativity gurus, but only she (and my friend Jeff Stamp) are able to instantly know what tool to apply in what situation. This book provides some productive tools but it also nudges the reader inexorably toward the mindset where creativity is the norm that it always should have been (before we beat it out of ourselves). Having a book that operates on both levels is a gem. (You'd think she studied neuroscience or something.. ;)
As you might guess, this is a nice companion volume for any lean startup exercises (you might want to buy Steve Blank's "Startup Owners Manual", another steal like this) but I would recommend it for entrepreneurship learners and intrapreneurs too.
But that is not the ultimate plaudit. "InGenius" just received maybe the best praise possible. Somebody at the coffeeshop swiped it for the SECOND time. Books that people keep stealing? Gems.
As the kids say "Awesome sauce!" You will not regret buying this book. Read it. Use the tools. They work.
3 people found this helpful
★★★★★
5.0
AFQ5TSQGUAGDFBV6DQDH...
✓ Verified Purchase
This book is amazing. I am a student at the University of ...
This book is amazing. I am a student at the University of Baltimore, enrolled in the survey Entrepreneurship course, and this book was recommended for reading. Like a lot of people, I too thought creativity was not something that can be taught. In this book Tina lays out some very specific things one can do to help grow their own creativity (I want to list some things here but I won’t. No spoilers here).
I like that she instantly dismisses the notion of a person not being creative and spends pretty much the entirety of the book encouraging attitudes that foster creativity and creative processes. While some of them are easier said than done, nothing in this book is remotely impossible. More importantly, this was an EASY read. As a college student I couldn’t appreciate this enough. Literally anyone can pick up this book and read it end to end with ease.
If I had to nitpick, I would say she some parts of the book had a very, “yeah it’s difficult but just do it” feel. But that may be just in my head. Outside of that little thing, this book is an absolute must, especially for those of us who think creative types are born but not made. They definitely can be made.
2 people found this helpful
★★★★★
4.0
AGPWM4M4WYMXAI5RLGTE...
✓ Verified Purchase
Different Value
A month ago, when I parked my car in the side of Japanese book store, I saw a big trash bin and the manager of book store dumped many books to that trash bin. At that time I was a scavenger and found "What I wish I knew When I was 20". I realized that the value of the store manager and me is quite different.
Tina Seelig's book, ingenious, was beautifully written in the overall.
In the last chapter of "Inside Out and Outside In", I disagree with the author's approach. On page 199, the assignment, the author gave to her students was to find value from a single trash. The author missed to explain the full assessment of the result of this assignment including the evaluation. So that my impression is that students created a larger trash from a single trash. If I do this exercise 10 times using different trash, what I can gain? Probably I do not find the value from this exercise.
morrie
2 people found this helpful
★★★★★
4.0
AFEJUYBKRQFUBWPWRTNX...
✓ Verified Purchase
Vroom. Vroom. Vroom.
Ready to unlock the creative genius within you?
Here's a good place to start.
In her book _inGenius_, executive director of the Stanford Technology Venture Program Tina Seelig provides a roadmap for unleashing the creative genius within. In summarizing her mission for this book, she writes:
"The entire project was driven by my desire to understand the creative process and to share my insights. I wanted to contribute something meaningful to the global conversation about innovation, based on my years of experience in the classroom." (p. 205)
She delivers this meaningful contribution via her new model of creativity called the Innovation Engine, which presents the creative process as a synergistic mix of internal factors (knowledge, imagination, and attitude) and external catalysts (resources, habitat, and culture). The book examines each of these essential components of creativity in turn, using fun and fascinating examples from her (sold out!) courses on creativity and contributions from industry experts.
Her crash course on creativity boils down to these essentials:
"Essentially, creativity is an endless resource, initiated by your drive to tackle challenges and to seize opportunities. Anything and everything can spark your Innovative Engine--every word, every object, every decision, and every action. Creativity can be enhanced by honing your ability to observe and learn, by connecting and combining ideas, by reframing problems, and by moving beyond the first right answers. You can boost your creative output by building habitats that foster problem solving, crafting environments that support the generation of new ideas, building teams that are optimized for innovation, and contributing to a culture that encourages experimentation." (p. 201)
So, if you're ready to unlock the creative genius within, think of _inGenius_ as the key for revving up your Innovation Engine.
Vroom. Vroom. Vroom.
2 people found this helpful
★★★★★
4.0
AESD4LQPF5W3JAFEOHNW...
✓ Verified Purchase
Good book.
I have been recommended this book for an Entrepreneurial class at the University of Baltimore (Jonathan Gorr).
As an artist, the prospect of reading a book on enhancing creativity didn’t seem crucial to someone like me. However, I was pleasantly surprised by Seelig’s ideas in this book that I have been utterly incorrect in my assumptions. Seelig talks about creativity in respect to developing lucrative business ideas that are the product of creative brainstorming. This book is a brisk, easy read on tapping your creative potential. Most of the subjects Seelig presents are very practical to anyone, entrepreneurs or no. This book is also devoid of any esoteric jargon that would turn some readers off; it’s a very conversational mentor-like instruction. Seelig provides adequate real-world examples of businesses, namely Apple, Instagram, OnTech, Facebook, Tesco, and Bespoke, and describes the creative processes they employed to succeed.
The book as a whole is centered around Seelig’s idea of an Innovation Engine, that is the potential of every person to be creative. Throughout the chapters following her explanation thereof, she describes the components of the engine. Some of these components include Culture, Knowledge, and Attitude. In addition to this central theme of harnessing creative success, she describes the rules of brainstorming, how to combine ideas, how to shift your frame of perspective to tackle unseen problems, the importance of observation, experimentation, and the importance of creating an environment that cultivates creativity and encourages group interaction, to name a few.
In summary, I would recommend this book to everyone. It applies to any walk of life and any profession.
1 people found this helpful
★★★★★
3.0
AGU24TGBFN5WQ2M6O3EI...
✓ Verified Purchase
Like John Berger's Ways of Seeing, not useful for artists
A book explaining and inspiring creativity in non-creatives is completely different from what artists need. If you're an artist, the best thing is spending time in the studio. Next best is seeing as much interesting art as your eyes can stand.
1 people found this helpful
★★★★★
5.0
AFUIUV2G7D2QUM6DGGWY...
✓ Verified Purchase
for creative people
This book is an excellent guidance to understand and develop a process to improve creative thinking. Several examples are very helpful.
