Recommended read

If you live for the thrill of a new idea... or find yourself seeking solutions to difficult challenges... or let's face it, if you work anywhere near the field of communications... then this book is for you.

The premise of Jonah Lehrer's new book, Imagine, is that creativity doesn't only belong to those wacky geniuses who come up with seemingly magical solutions. It's something we all need in order to approach our work, challenges, issues and ideas more effectively.

And indeed, he opines that we must foster creativity in order to solve the increasingly difficult challenges we face.  

According to Lehrer, creativity isn't magic, it's just a lot of hard work.  It's about smashing people together and sharing what we know and learning from people who don't think like us and sharing secrets and stealing ideas to build on them. It's about letting outsiders in.  And talking and talking and talking. It's really all about people.

It can be an unruly and seemingly inefficient process. It creates friction.  And it takes grit to stay the course. Yet Lehrer makes a strong case that fostering creativity is very necessary as we choose to either work together or fail alone.

It's a quick, entertaining read that has us making some changes in how we approach our work.