A book recommendation from Dan Beaulieu:

Creativity and Problem Solving

From the Brian Tracy Success Library

By: Brian Tracy

Copyright 2014Amacom

Price $9.95

Pages: 112 with Index

We are all geniuses according to Brian Tracy, with the proper training we can all come up with new and exciting ideas to improve our companies and our lives. In his new small but very powerful and thought provoking book Tracy shows how we can put our minds to work thinking and coming up with new ideas.

In one chapter he writes about the seven sources of innovation and how these sources promote creative thinking: Here are a few examples to whet your appetite:

The Unexpected Event: When something happens a problem or an opportunity that makes us think that much harder, focusing on this new issue to overcome the challenge or take advantage of the opportunity. He demonstrates this by showing us how Peter Omidyar wanting to sell his large Pez candy dispenser collection realized that there was not good auction site he could go to son he created E-Bay.

Process Need: When you need to improve process or technology to overcome an industry challenge, like when Tom Monaghan wanted to know why pizzas could not be delivered in less than thirty minutes and found a unique process change to make it happen.

Demographic Changes: Think of all the news products that are being developed as the baby boomers enter retirement age. This is a perfect example of demographic changes.

Tracy encourages us via 21 short but pertinent chapters to use our minds to solve our problems.

What I like about this book is that you cannot but spend four or five minutes reading it and your mind starts to whir with new insights and ideas. The book is just crammed full of what I would call mind triggers designed to make you think and create. He spends time talking about “Mindstorming Method” how they should be run, how many people should participate and how long is long enough for these to be effective.

There are other chapters on

• The roots of creativity

• Developing the qualities of genius

• Mind developing exercises

And many more. This a great bargain when you think of converting a mere ten bucks into priceless ideas.