Workplace Creativity

The hallmark of any exceptional career is the ability to devise innovative solutions for work challenges. Creative thinking skills are vital for your professional advancement.

Are your organization's ideas growing stale? Do your employees need to refresh their thinking? We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the 10 most important ones to help you instill creativity across your organization.

The Fearless Organization offers practical guidance for teams and organizations who are serious about success in the modern economy. With so much riding on innovation, creativity, and spark, it is essential to attract and retain quality talent, but what good does this talent do if no one is able to speak their mind? The traditional culture of "fitting in" and "going along" spells doom in the knowledge economy. Success requires a continuous influx of new ideas, new challenges, and critical thought, and the interpersonal climate must not suppress, silence, ridicule, or intimidate.

The traditional attitude toward creativity in the American business world is to "think outside the box": to brainstorm without restraint in hopes of coming up with a breakthrough idea, often in moments of crisis. Sometimes it works, but it’s a problem-specific solution that does nothing to engender creative thinking more generally. Inside the Box demonstrates Systematic Inventive Thinking (SIT), a method that systemizes creativity as part of the corporate culture. SIT requires thinking "inside the box", working in one’s familiar world to create new ideas independent of specific problems.

Work is an important part of living, whether you wait on customers, build a business or cook for your family. As such, we all have important stories to tell about our work. From this rich treasure chest of experiences, Canfield, Hansen, and company have gathered a special collection of inspiring tales that share the daily courage, compassion, and creativity that take place in workplaces everywhere.

Everyone claims to value creativity, and businesses are clamoring for disruptive thinking and innovation. Yet we often feel creatively stifled at work, because business processes seem to leave no room for real originality. In Everyday Creative, culture and creative leadership expert Mykel Dixon reveals what's holding us back from our full creative potential and explains how we can reclaim our original, vibrant selves.

Best-selling author and scholar Michael Roberto presents a thorough investigation of organizational obstacles to creative thought. Highly relevant to the growth crises many enterprises face in today's economic landscape, this book examines how to break barriers to spark creativity and foster new ideas.

Researchers have found that the accelerated pace of modern office life is taking its toll on productivity, employee engagement, creativity and wellbeing. Faced with a relentless flood of information and distractions, our brains try to process everything at once, increasing our stress, decreasing our effectiveness and negatively impacting our performance.

Discover design strategies for using your own unique social identities and experiences as inspiration to challenge the status quo and create the kind of lasting change that leads to greater equity and social justice, from Stanford University's d.school.

What really sets the best managers above the rest? It's their power to build a cadre of employees who have great inner work lives—consistently positive emotions; strong motivation; and favorable perceptions of the organization, their work, and their colleagues. The worst managers undermine inner work life, often unwittingly.

Tom Kelley, author of The Art of Innovation and the general manager of IDEO, the world-famous design firm, illuminates the strategies IDEO used to beat the devil's advocate and drive creativity throughout the organization.

Pirates didn't just break the rules, they rewrote them. They didn't just reject society, they reinvented it. Pirates didn't just challenge the status quo, they changed everyfuckingthing. Pirates faced a self-interested establishment, a broken system, industrial-scale disruption and an uncertain future. Sound familiar? Be More Pirate unveils the innovative strategies of golden age pirates, drawing parallels between the tactics and teachings of legends like Henry Morgan and Blackbeard with modern rebels like Elon Musk, Malala and Banksy.

Using real-life practical experiences, serial entrepreneur and thought leader Faisal Hoque teams up with journalist Drake Baer to provide a personal and professional playbook that is part philosophy, part business, and part history. Everything Connects offers the wisdom of 2,500-year-old Eastern philosophies and the interconnected insights of Leonardo da Vinci. Couple that with Fortune 100 corporate cross pollination for creativity and startup thinking for how to adapt with ease, and you'll quickly discover that everything connects.

In today's workplace, too many marginalized groups are underrepresented. And yet, workplaces often struggle to find enough employees to sustain their growing needs, putting massive pressure on HR hiring teams to fill the demand. Organizational psychologist Gil Winch argues that addressing our own biases and building organizations where everyone feels a profound sense of belonging is not only great for a company's bottom line, it's also good for employees, communities, and society as a whole. Winning with Underdogs is the highly practical step-by-step guide you need.

Belonging brings out the best in everyone. Whether you’re a parent, teacher, community organizer, or leader of any sort, your group is unlikely to thrive if the individuals don’t feel welcomed, included, and valued for who they are. The good news is that you can use design to create feelings of inclusion in your organization: rituals that bring people together, spaces that promote calm, roles that create a sense of responsibility, systems that make people feel respected, and more.

Technology has revolutionized the business sector. Whether you're an entrepreneur, employee, CEO, or executive, you're likely feeling the effects of less humanity and more technology. Our minds are distracted, our attention spans are shortened, we want everything on demand, in boxes are never empty, our energy is frequently negative, we're addicted to social media, and we're sleep deprived. This cannot be the new normal. Breath is the antidote! Breathe to Succeed shares the transformative power of breath in business.

In today’s work environment, the lines between our professional and personal lives are blurred more than ever before. Whatever is happening to us outside of our workplace - whether stressful, painful, or joyful - follows us into work as well. We may think we have to keep these realities under wraps and act as if we “have it all together”. But as Mike Robbins explains, we can work better, lead better, and be more engaged and fulfilled if - instead of trying to hide who we are- we show up fully and authentically.

We've been told that working harder and smarter is the only way to succeed in business and life. But it's not true. Hustle culture is causing burnout and pain in our lives, making us feel divided. What if instead we focused on working creatively with others? And asked How can we shape cultures people love? There is hope in co-creation. Brave Together is a deep exploration into how we can live and lead as co-creators, filled with unexpected stories, powerful principles, and a future-oriented framework.

Much work-based training is a waste of time and money because the majority of people are neither emotionally ready nor practically inclined to apply their learning to the way they behave. Power Up Your Mind offers a new model of learning which will revolutionise the way you learn and perform.

The employee experience has dramatically changed, catalyzed by emerging technology, remote-first and hybrid work structures, and rapidly changing business environments. Well-being at work has become an essential strategic priority, while the pressure and demands on teams to deliver results have never been greater. Leaders crave guidance to ignite more connection, innovation, and belonging at work to attract, develop, and retain top talent and discover deeper purpose at work. Creativity is the essential ingredient in today’s workplace to be more effective, joyful, and authentic.