Thinking books · Creativity · Tom & David Kelley, 2013
Creative Confidence — the big ideas
An argument that creativity is a practice rather than a trait, from the founders of a design firm.
Free — no account needed to read
The big ideas
The main obstacle is usually fear of judgement rather than absence of ideas, and it is addressed by small, low-stakes successes rather than by encouragement.
Building a rough version early converts an argument about opinions into a question about evidence, and the roughness is what makes feedback honest.
Observing real people doing the real thing produces better problems than asking them what they want, because people describe what they think they should want.
Practise it — no need to have read it
Take an idea you have been thinking about. Build the crudest possible version today — a sketch, a paragraph, a fake screen — and show one person.
A hint: Rough on purpose. Polish invites praise; roughness invites the truth.
Where it shows up in real life
- Product ideas
- Presenting an unformed idea
- Getting past being stuck
Described in our own words with the source named — never quoted, and not a substitute for reading the book.
Thinking methods from this book
- Separate generating from judging — Running idea generation and evaluation as two activities, not one.
The thinking it builds
- Creative Thinking — Generate possibilities and new approaches