Time and space. Genetics and robotics. Education and fashion. Possibilities limited only by our imaginations. The future is yours to create. Could you be the Leonardo da Vinci of our times? Most ideas are incremental, quickly copied and suffocated by conventions. "Future back" thinking starts with stretching possibilities then makes them a reality "now forward". The best ideas emerge by seeing what everyone has seen, and thinking like nobody else. Newness occurs in the margins not the mainstream. Solutions emerge through powerful fusions of the best ideas into practical, useful concepts. Creative people rise up. Visionaries, border crossers and game changers. Engage your right brain, open your eyes, think more holistically... intuition rules. From Apple to Blackberry, GE to Google, innovative companies stand out from the crowd not so much for their exceptional products, despite what one might assume, but for the way they challenge conventions, redefine markets, and change consumer expectations. Apple didn't just create the iPod; it envisioned the future of music and then made a product to service that future. And the same holds true for every highly innovative company. In Creative Genius, Peter Fisk presents ten tracks for innovation and provides business blueprints for making that innovation happen. Creative Genius is inspired by the imagination and perspective of Leonardo da Vinci, in order to drive creativity, design and innovation in more radical and powerful ways. It includes practical tools ranging from scenario planning and context reframing to accelerated innovation and market entry, plus 50 tracks, 25 tools, and 50 inspiring case studies. Creative Genius is "the best and last" in the Genius series by bestselling author Peter Fisk. Others include Business Genius, Marketing Genius and Customer Genius.

From the bestselling author of Thinkertoys, this follow up brings innovative creative thinking techniques within reach, giving you the tools to tackle everyday challenges in new ways. Internationally renowned business creativity expert, Michael Michalko will show you how creative people think—and how to put their secrets to work for you in business and in your personal life. You don't have to be a genius to solve problems like one. Michalko researched and analyzed hundreds of history's greatest thinkers across disciplines—from Leonardo da Vinci to Pablo Picasso—to bring the best of their techniques together and to teach you how to apply them in your own life. Cracking Creativity is filled with exercises and anecdotes that will soon have you looking at problems and seeing many different solutions.

Do you want to be a creative genius? This work aims to expose the common misconceptions about creativity.

With the pace of competition, innovation, and change in today's world, creativity isn't a luxury -- it is a survival skill. But even the most creative people can end up stuck, stressed out, and stale, worn down by the daily grind. "Stimulated!" is an energetic exploration of five habits that can help you release your creativity and expand your innovative thinking. The method is playful, fun, enriching, and mind-expanding, but most important, it's a step-by-step process for getting unstuck. With this book you learn: how to draw inspiration and fresh insights from the world around you; how to make the most of your surroundings and develop an environment that will get the creative juices flowing; how to turn work into play; how to take the leap of faith and commit to big, bold ideas; and how to reap the benefits of your success and failures to contribute to the next creative effort.

"Creative genius moves students beyond lower-level thinking skills, like fact recall, and stimulates them to make new connections, think beyond the obvious, and find the possible within the impossible."--back cover.

What it takes to be a genius: nine essential and contradictory ingredients. What does it take to be a genius? A high score on an IQ test? Brilliant physicist Richard Feynman's IQ was too low for membership in Mensa. Suffering from varying degrees of mental illness? Creativity is often considered a marker of mental health. Be a child prodigy like Mozart, or a later bloomer like Beethoven? Die tragically young, like Keats, or live to a ripe old age like Goethe? In The Genius Checklist, Dean Keith Simonton examines the key factors in creative genius and finds that they are more than a little contradictory. Simonton, who has studied creativity and genius for more than four decades, draws on both scientific research and stories from the lives of famous creative geniuses that range from Isaac Newton to Vincent van Gogh to Virginia Woolf. He explains the origin of IQ tests and the art of estimating the IQ of long-dead historical figures (John Stuart Mill: 200; Charles Darwin: 160). He compares IQ scores with achieved eminence as measures of genius, and he draws a distinction between artistic and scientific genius. He rules out birth order as a determining factor (in the James family alone, three geniuses at three different birth-order positions: William James, firs-tborn; Henry James, second born; Alice James, born fifth and last); considers Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hour rule; and describes how the “lone” genius gets enmeshed in social networks. Genius, Simonton explains, operates in ways so subtle that they seem contradictory. Genius is born and made, the domain of child prodigies and their elders. Simonton's checklist gives us a new, integrative way to understand geniuses—and perhaps even to nurture your own genius!

Tag along on this New York Times bestselling “witty, entertaining romp” (The New York Times Book Review) as Eric Weiner travels the world, from Athens to Silicon Valley—and back through history, too—to show how creative genius flourishes in specific places at specific times. In this “intellectual odyssey, traveler’s diary, and comic novel all rolled into one” (Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness), acclaimed travel writer Weiner sets out to examine the connection between our surroundings and our most innovative ideas. A “superb travel guide: funny, knowledgeable, and self-deprecating” (The Washington Post), he explores the history of places like Vienna of 1900, Renaissance Florence, ancient Athens, Song Dynasty Hangzhou, and Silicon Valley to show how certain urban settings are conducive to ingenuity. With his trademark insightful humor, this “big-hearted humanist” (The Wall Street Journal) walks the same paths as the geniuses who flourished in these settings to see if the spirit of what inspired figures like Socrates, Michelangelo, and Leonardo remains. In these places, Weiner asks, “What was in the air, and can we bottle it?” “Fun and thought provoking” (The Miami Herald), The Geography of Genius reevaluates the importance of culture in nurturing creativity and “offers a practical map for how we can all become a bit more inventive” (Adam Grant, author of Originals).