What do you think?
Rate this book
Creative Change: Why We Resist It... How We Can Embrace It
One of the nation’s leading psychologists asks why today’s corporate leaders desire but reject creative solutions --and finds some surprising conclusions.
All corporate CEOs, top executives, and other business leaders say they want creativity and need real innovation in order to thrive in a competitive world. But according to startling research from former Wharton management professor Jennifer Mueller, the truth is that many business leaders chronically reject creative solutions and often embrace the familiar, even as they profess commitment to innovation.
Mueller’s research also reveals that it’s not just CEOs, but educators, scientists, and many, many others who often struggle to accept new and creative ideas even when desired. Mueller parses the tough questions that these findings raise. Could people love but also hate creative ideas? Could the mindset we use to evaluate ideas turn this love or hate on or off—in an instant? Do experts struggle even more than novices with this bias? And even more startling, could the “best practices” that organizations employ to manage innovation activate this bias, and inadvertently, kill innovation?
Mueller diagnoses this hidden innovation barrier, and provides solutions,
O A four- step process (and a fifth lifeline) to self-disrupt your current mindset and recognize creative opportunity;
O an idea-pitching framework aimed at helping you overcome other peoples’ sticky preference for the status quo;
O key organizational levers to disrupt the cultural beliefs holding your company back;
O tips to more accurately recognize creative leaders who can lead organizations in productive new directions, and
O strategies to generate ideas without harming your ability to make them count with the decision-makers.
Based on the latest psychological studies in the field, along with numerous illustrative examples, Creative Change is the kind of provocative creative leadership book that will be discussed for years to come.
All corporate CEOs, top executives, and other business leaders say they want creativity and need real innovation in order to thrive in a competitive world. But according to startling research from former Wharton management professor Jennifer Mueller, the truth is that many business leaders chronically reject creative solutions and often embrace the familiar, even as they profess commitment to innovation.
Mueller’s research also reveals that it’s not just CEOs, but educators, scientists, and many, many others who often struggle to accept new and creative ideas even when desired. Mueller parses the tough questions that these findings raise. Could people love but also hate creative ideas? Could the mindset we use to evaluate ideas turn this love or hate on or off—in an instant? Do experts struggle even more than novices with this bias? And even more startling, could the “best practices” that organizations employ to manage innovation activate this bias, and inadvertently, kill innovation?
Mueller diagnoses this hidden innovation barrier, and provides solutions,
O A four- step process (and a fifth lifeline) to self-disrupt your current mindset and recognize creative opportunity;
O an idea-pitching framework aimed at helping you overcome other peoples’ sticky preference for the status quo;
O key organizational levers to disrupt the cultural beliefs holding your company back;
O tips to more accurately recognize creative leaders who can lead organizations in productive new directions, and
O strategies to generate ideas without harming your ability to make them count with the decision-makers.
Based on the latest psychological studies in the field, along with numerous illustrative examples, Creative Change is the kind of provocative creative leadership book that will be discussed for years to come.
239 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2017
57 people are currently reading
297 people want to read
About the author
Jennifer Mueller
1 book4 followersJennifer Mueller earned her PhD in Social and Developmental Psychology at Brandeis University, and has been on the faculty of many top business schools including the Wharton School, Yale School of Management and NYU's Stern School of Business. One of her papers, upon which this book is based, “The Bias Against Creativity,” went viral and was downloaded over 65,000 times—receiving more than 100 media mentions and being described as a “famous study” in TheAtlantic. Jennifer’s work has been featured in many major media outlets including WSJ, NPR, CNN, HBR, The Atlantic, Fortune, Forbes, and Fast Company. Jennifer, a native Californian, is currently an Associate Professor at the University of San Diego.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
November 27, 2019
I loved the focus on the receiving end of creativity in a corporate context. There are so many books on "how" to be creative, and the need for creativity. I found this book refreshing in that it highlights the bias we have against creativity, and how to mitigate your own and a decision maker's bias to find better solutions. Definitely recommend!
September 26, 2019
I got this as an audiobook and ebook and have listened to the audiobook. It took a long time to do this because the narrator sounds like a computer-generated voice. I knew a lot of the info was useful, but I had to re-listen to several passages many times over. I was in the car, so it didn't matter, just frustrating. I'm glad I got the ebook, so I can go back through it later.
I believe the information will be useful, especially for anyone who has ever tried to drive change in an organization only to find that no one truly wants change (even thought they say they do). There are actual steps explained for changing this mindset, and I'm definitely going to read those sections more thoroughly. Just DON'T bother with the audiobook unless you need to take a nap.
I believe the information will be useful, especially for anyone who has ever tried to drive change in an organization only to find that no one truly wants change (even thought they say they do). There are actual steps explained for changing this mindset, and I'm definitely going to read those sections more thoroughly. Just DON'T bother with the audiobook unless you need to take a nap.
July 24, 2018
Mueller confirms what I've experienced as a creative entrepreneur. People resist creativity. Just like people resist change. We might even long for a creative solution. But our desire to have a proven solution often conflicts with our ability to have those creative solutions be fully realized. Mueller provides strategies for how to push creative change through an organization. My only frustration was, as many of these scholarly approaches to creativity tend to, the book focused on creative change within large organizations rather than on a personal basis. I would be thrilled to see an accompanying book that would address that.
March 6, 2017
Not a bad quick read, but also not exactly what you might expect. Reading the cover and blurbs, one might expect this to be a self-help book on how to become more creative. It is, rather a management guide on how to encourage and handle creativity in a corporate environment. My biggest complaint with the writing is author Mueller’s love of rhetorical questions. Donald Trump supporters could benefit from reading pages 170-173, “The Tricky Relationship Between Leadership and Creativity,” in which Mueller dissects some popular myths about leadership.
July 18, 2018
This book was required reading for my MBA class. It was decent (and much better than some of the readings from my program). The first half was really interesting. The second half dragged and it felt like she over-explained the ideas. Those chapters could have been halved without it impacting the content. I also don't know if this was throughout the book or just in the last chapter (15 pages), but she kept using "in other words". I counted 7 times and that was just from when I noticed.
May 10, 2017
More about management & leadership in the second half of the book. While the author gets into some of the psychology of resistance early on, it wasn't explored as much as I had hoped. I suspect the author's research articles will be of interest and the book made me want to seek those out.
May 27, 2017
Interesting book on the proper framing of the marketing of ideas and innovations within an organization. It could be interesting to the artist as well, when considering the "whys" and "hows" of new ideas.
February 5, 2018
I will certainly use this book in my next future structure/ missions focused operational planning team. There maybe utility in approaching organizational change leveraging the FAB (fit, aha, broaden) framework. Recommend this book to my institutional planning friends.
April 14, 2018
Okay book, but really focused on corporate world. Didn’t feel very relevant to non-profit work.
May 7, 2018
High marks for a useful and readable book backed by empirical evidence. Good for those who would wish to more effectively cultivate, manage and implement innovation.
July 19, 2020
Topic interesting but could have been shorter. Writing boring.
July 1, 2018
Probably essential reading for managers in business that demands some type of innovative thinking. I liken it to how anyone in positions of power/authority ought to understand Milgrim's research and it's implications. Anyone in a gatekeeping role within an organization ought to understand how the nature of the role affects how they think and function.
May 3, 2017
To be reviewed in the September-October issue of Global Business and Organizational Excellence.
December 21, 2017
I really liked Creative Change and I found the ideas in it to be very useful.
Dr. Mueller knows that most people are afraid of change and fear the unknown. Why should anyone do anything differently if the status quo is working? So how do you convince someone to invest in a new idea? This requires some kind of conversation, and knowing how to talk to people is a big plus. She gives the example of a various signs planted at the Petrified Forest discouraging theft of petrified wood. The sign that said, “Please don’t remove the petrified wood in the park” turned out to be the most effective. A sign that started with, “Many past visitors have removed the petrified wood……” was least effective. She explains why in the book.
In this same chapter (“Overcome others’ bias against creativity”) she describes the idea’s fit (eg, Apple is not IBM), and the AHA strategies of analogy and combination. Analogies and combinations “serve to give your listener a comparison point. But instead of noting that one thing is like the other – like an analogy – combinations serve to emphasize the new element that is created by combining two things that are usually not seen together.” Being creative, then, involves seeing similarities between things that are very different and that can cause a paradigm shift. Aha! Mueller gives the case of how Star Wars was pitched – to 2001—that failed! Then there was this Kodak engineer, Steve Sasson, who pitched digital photography to Kodak and failed to convince them of his idea.
But it’s not enough to have a great idea, and successfully pitch it, you also need to have some sense of how the idea will work in the modern world. The example she gives is the failure of the electric car to dominate in Israel.
This book contains a lot of really good practical strategies , for instance : how do you brainstorm?
And there are some eye-openers: what happens when you change maternal leave to parental leave? And some ideas to contemplate: if we declare in schools unimportant from day one, you diminish the importance of creativity from day one.
And what about those sticky things -- that no one would ever ever use? Oh yeah: Post-its.
Dr. Mueller knows that most people are afraid of change and fear the unknown. Why should anyone do anything differently if the status quo is working? So how do you convince someone to invest in a new idea? This requires some kind of conversation, and knowing how to talk to people is a big plus. She gives the example of a various signs planted at the Petrified Forest discouraging theft of petrified wood. The sign that said, “Please don’t remove the petrified wood in the park” turned out to be the most effective. A sign that started with, “Many past visitors have removed the petrified wood……” was least effective. She explains why in the book.
In this same chapter (“Overcome others’ bias against creativity”) she describes the idea’s fit (eg, Apple is not IBM), and the AHA strategies of analogy and combination. Analogies and combinations “serve to give your listener a comparison point. But instead of noting that one thing is like the other – like an analogy – combinations serve to emphasize the new element that is created by combining two things that are usually not seen together.” Being creative, then, involves seeing similarities between things that are very different and that can cause a paradigm shift. Aha! Mueller gives the case of how Star Wars was pitched – to 2001—that failed! Then there was this Kodak engineer, Steve Sasson, who pitched digital photography to Kodak and failed to convince them of his idea.
But it’s not enough to have a great idea, and successfully pitch it, you also need to have some sense of how the idea will work in the modern world. The example she gives is the failure of the electric car to dominate in Israel.
This book contains a lot of really good practical strategies , for instance : how do you brainstorm?
And there are some eye-openers: what happens when you change maternal leave to parental leave? And some ideas to contemplate: if we declare in schools unimportant from day one, you diminish the importance of creativity from day one.
And what about those sticky things -- that no one would ever ever use? Oh yeah: Post-its.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews