The Art of Creative Thinking

by Gerard I. Nierenberg

Now you can solve any problem more creatively! The Art of Creative Thinkingwill enable you to use the innovative skills we all possess to find effective solution to any problems -- at home, in the office, anywhere! By following Gerard I. Nierenberg's step-by-step method, you can increase your creativity and mental capacities without limits. By using this clear and simple program -- highlighted with examples, exercises, experiments, and problems -- you can successfully tap your unlimited creative potential. No longer will you have to wait for things to happen. You will make them happen -- your way!

Genres: Business, Self Help

240 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1982

About the author

Gerard Nierenberg was the founder of the Negotiation Institute, an educational non-profit institute dedicated to advancing the art of negotiation. He published his first book, The Art of Negotiating, in 1968; the subsequent success of the book led to the creation of customized in-house workshops on the art of negotiating. Mr. Nierenberg provided seminars to entities from Fortune 500 companies to academic institutions to governmental organizations and agencies worldwide. He went on to write twenty-two books, translated into thirty-two languages, on the subjects of negotiation, communication and effective sales techniques.

As a thought leader in the field of negotiation, he was frequently called upon by the press to provide in-depth analysis of events of the day. In conjunction with his bestseller on body language How To Read a Person Like a Book, he appeared several times on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. He died in New York at the age of 89.

Reviews

[Angelica · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Art of Creative Thinking delivers a categorical approach to creative thinking, with five identified concepts: structure, order, relation, levels, and point of view. Nierenberg expands on how one can think within the filters of these five categories to find more creative solutions and expand your thinking process in general. While I agree that there are several questions we can ask ourselves to find more solutions and think more broadly, I don’t believe Nierenberg is convincing enough in his exercises, references, and examples.

At times the information presented hardly seems relevant to helping someone think creatively. There is a chapter on Piaget’s stages of moral reasoning where the reaching relevance comes by pointing out relations and structure within the levels of morality—how does this help us think creatively? There is another chapter on researching creatively that seems like a reach for using these concepts in everyday life. Of course in the age of Google and AI, a chapter on research in the 1980s is outdated altogether.

There are a couple of interesting chapters near the end about other methods of creative thinking, such as brainstorming and synectics. I liked these and wish this book was more about combining different theories on creative thinking rather than sticking largely with the five categories of thinking presented early on.

Would I recommend? No.
Did I at least get something out of it? Yes. I will take with me the habit of thinking in different terms to open my mind to more possibilities.

[John Hanson · Rating 2 out of 5]

A university professor back in 1981 commenting on the theory that successful management qualities can be quantified said something like, "It sounds believable but the truth is such models never work. There are always exceptions. Something about the trillions of unmappable brain cells. I've always taken models, like Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, Myers Briggs, political continuums, and all others with large grains of salt. They all sound good, but there are always exceptions. I smiled wryly when I came upon a quote by A.H. Maslow on the penultimate page ;) I also tried looking up all this mumbo jumbo on the interwebs. If it was credible, there must be someone alive today expounding its marvellous benefits. My searches came up with zilch.

Unfortunately, this is not a book on how to be more creative but more a manifesto explaining how decisions are made. Everything that happens in life can be boiled down to structure, order, relation, and if you can only grasp this concept, you can be the creative genius. Never mind there was no instruction on how to be more discerning or how to put these elements into practice. The book was full of exercises, but they were barely explained. "What did you think?" was the deepest the author went. In the long chapter on cases, I couldn't help but feel each case would have fit perfectly within each other explanation. In most of them, the explanation barely fit the situation.

Useful to skim, I suppose. The next time I'm faced with a problem, maybe I will try to map out the structures, order, and relationships and attempt to change each one at a time. But as a writer searching for new ideas, new twists, new ways of doing things, this book offered nothing but dull writing and [2] spelling errors.

[Angel · Rating 1 out of 5]

It took me a while to finish this book because it never engaged me.