The Creative Priority
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List Price: $18.00
Our Price: $17.95
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Manufacturer: HarperAudio
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Audio Cassette
EAN: 9780694519651
Format: Abridged
ISBN: 0694519650
Label: HarperAudio
Manufacturer: HarperAudio
Number Of Items: 2
Publication Date: 1998-02-01
Publisher: HarperAudio
Release Date: 1998-02-03
Studio: HarperAudio
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Editorial Reviews:
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Here's an exciting new look at how to manage creative employees, from one of America's most innovative designers and managers. Jerry Hirshberg, founder and president of Nissan Design International (NDI) has led Nissan's world-famous design team from success to success, garnering contracts from such companies as Apple, Ford, and RDI Computer Corporation. This audiobook delivers principles for building creative teams that have been tested in his 19 hugely successful years at NDI.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: The Value of Design
Comment: Looking at several of the reviews already posted, the real value of this book is being missed. To see this book as being about automotive design misses the point altogether. This is a book to celebrate the largely untapped potential of focusing on design 'outside' of a particular market. The fact that the charter of the group specifically had to allow for the design of things 'other' than cars/vehicles, was to keep the problem-solving perspectives of the designers 'fresh' and 'exercised'.
Design is a fundamental principle that applies to the most critical aspects of the success of ANY business: optimizing relationships (the lifeblood of an enterprise's existence). The touchpoints at which any individual interacts with a business (whether customer, employee, supplier...) can all be optimized with thoughtful design considerations (it's not just about products).
Read Hirshberg and look 'beyond' the immediate problem. The principles are fundamental. Hirshberg does a great job of illustrating the principles within the context of his own experiences.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Review Part One - the first 6 chapters
Comment:
The main take home messages from the first six chapters of `The Creative Priority' can be summarized as:
Creative Abrasion
In most cultures conflict is associated with negative emotions, which are usually considered counterproductive. Harmony and teamwork is very important supposedly for an organization to function effectively. However, when everyone thinks and acts alike no innovation can occur. All great thinkers, creative geniuses challenged the status quo. This is basically the root cause in every large company for the inability to innovate or to be creative, because the culture in most large companies is to conform rather than to stick out. That creativity goes along with a fair amount of conflict or friction is not a new idea. Most teams consisting of representatives from different functional areas will go through the phase of "storming" during the formation of the team. During this phase the team experiences a lot of conflict between the team members and will learn to deal with conflict in a constructive way - leading to creative abrasion.
It should be made clear that you shouldn't just dive into conflict head on, as it fosters creativity. Conflict for conflict sake does not assist in creative abrasion; it will lead to real abrasion, and probably more. Creative abrasion is difficult to implement as it needs to be nurtured, meaning that this would only work in a certain "culture", which has accepted a certain amount of conflict as "normal" and productive. Besides the right "culture" you need also to hire divergent pairs.
Hiring in Divergent Pairs
In order to create an environment for "creative abrasion" you cannot, must not, hire the same people - all mirror images of yourself. Again, in such a situation they would probably all think and act alike, therefore avoiding creative abrasion. However, you need to be careful in just hiring "difficult" people for the sake of it. The individual expertise of the pair has to match the job or project, in order to get to a synergetic relationship. My comparison of the divergent pair and creative abrasion would be Felix and Oscar in "The Odd Couple", who drove each other crazy, but not enough to split up.
As a chemist, Watson and Crick, the discoverer of the DNA Double Helix, come to my mind as an example of a divergent pair - a physicist leaving physics for chemistry and biology (Crick), and a former ornithologist changing towards research on viruses (Watson). From their different perspectives divergent pairs will have a better chance to solve any kind of complex problem.
Embracing the Dragon
Another integral part of the previous two points - Creative Abrasion and Hiring in Divergent Pairs - is the metaphor of embracing the dragon. The dragon is used as a symbol for a foreign or even threatening concept, standpoint, and even a hostile counterpart. By embracing the dragon you will assume the position of the "dragon" to see the situation from his side. However, there is a distinct difference between the two concepts of creative abrasion and embracing the dragon. Creative abrasion addresses the interaction between separate parties to form a new idea by combining their different viewpoints. However, embracing the dragon is focusing on the ability of a person to adopt a different or even threatening viewpoint to gain better insights into a particular problem. Or in other words, the ability to hold two divergent opinions in one's head. The connection between these two concepts is that they both threaten the status quo.
Creative Questions before Creative Answers
This concept addresses the issue of first defining the problem correctly, which requires that you might have to question previously formed believes and known standpoints - another form of the status quo. The main problem is to not define the problem with the already preconceived answer in mind. In my job at Abbott, I have experienced too many times that we defined the problem with a too narrow of a focus, which then lead subsequently that we did not identify the root cause of the problem. We would not fix the problem by the first time, but would apply "band aids" to the issue and had to come back later to give another try. My two sons, five and seven, taught me the concept of questioning so called "known" items, by asking me repeatedly what, how, and why on subjects, which are so clear to adults. However, I have a hard time explaining it to my kids.
Stepping Back from the Canvas
Stepping back from the canvas is another name for the fact that you are too close to the problem during the problem solving session. It is necessary to build in steps during the process where you deliberately do not focus on work. Sometimes this will led to insights into the problem, because you had not thought every second about your problem, but led the mind wander off. Specially, when you get stuck in your work, it is helpful to take some time off (step back from the canvas).
Failure, Cheating, and Play
Celebrate failures as a team instead of generating a culture where failure is not allowed. This quickly leads to risk adverse behavior, which is counterproductive in a creative environment. Learn from the mistakes, however.
Cheating has usually a negative connotation in most cultures. However, it is important to work together and build on each other's ideas, as it is done routinely in brainstorming. Again, the culture in the organization is very important. You do not want to create an environment where people have their ideas "stolen" from them.
Last not least, play around with your ideas. That way you may become more "creative" .
My biggest concern is the fact that Jerry Hirschberg had a "white canvas" or blank sheet of paper in front of him when he started to assemble his new design studio for Nissan. The concept listed above are very useful, but they may not work, when you have to turn around a major company.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Unleashing Creativity
Comment:
This is a very good book. In it Jerry Hirshberg shares his experiences as founder and president of Nissan Design International. In so doing he characterizes the leadership, organization, and group dynamics that foster breakthrough innovation. Here is a sampling of the kind of thinking he unpacks...
* Bureaucratic "structure" with its need for predictability, linear logic, conformance to accepted norms, and the dictates of the most recent "long range" vision statement, is a nearly perfect idea killing machine.
* The atmosphere that follows out of the creative priority, while challenging and stimulating, also becomes supportive and humane, since a workplace safe for ideas is a workplace safe for people.
* Creative expression is a bipolar event; it requires both a sender and a receiver.
* There is a vital connection between abrasiveness and original thinking.
* Creativity and destructiveness are at the same time polar opposites and closely related cousins.
* The very idea of a "balanced person" as some kind of ideal is somehow troubling.
* New truths are often in plain sight, but are rendered invisible or menacing by an associated language, or a stubborn set of assumptions.
* Nothing can so effectively move work forward at times as not working.
* Work tends to be a convergent activity, focusing on the task at hand. Play is a divergent activity. It opens out and is not easy to contain.
* Creative people can't be boxed up in an ivory tower. They need direct contact with real world information to develop new ideas.
* In the quest for creative thinking, research should never be left to someone else, as nothing stimulates the imagination as the impact of direct experience.
* Imaginative thinking cannot be constrained by preconception or prior intentions. Creativity does not play by the rules; it plays with the rules.
I would recommend this book for both leaders and members of creative groups as well those with whom they interact.
Customer Rating:
Summary: highly recommended
Comment: The Creative Priority is an excellent book that I recommend to absolutely everyone. The book is of particular interest to managers and executives of businesses, but it could prove useful for anyone interested in creativity in business. The book is particularly interesting to anyone interested in automotive design or industrial design in general. The book has many interesting designs and sketches throughout to help illustrate many of the design stories. Rather than simply stating and explaining techniques for fostering creativity in the workplace, Jerry uses real-life experiences as a leader of automotive innovation to illustrate the ideas behind creating a workplace organized around the principle of creativity. He claims that all the strategies must be taken together as a whole. The essence of the situation, he insists, is a necessity of recognizing creative thought as the paramount organizing principle of the business. It is recognizing the distinction between an innovative business and one that has creativity as its prime goal. Rather than simply applying techniques in an attempt to promote creative progress, creativity must be given priority. The ideas contained within the book are the result of experience and observation gained by Jerry over his nearly twenty year career in the business of creativity. The book progresses in an almost story-like fashion, narrating the account of Jerry
Customer Rating:
Summary: A great sampling of design, business, and creativity
Comment: This is a great book for designers and auto enthusiasts. It's really a quick read with good writing and editing. Hirshberg really talks about the nuances of design and the management of creativity in a saturated product market. There is a nice balance of design decision details and macro level organizational management described through the book. Hirshberg's mini-stories from one project to the people responsible for the ideas really get you thinking about all car designs. He touches on a range of production and concept cars - everything from the Nissan Pathfinder, Pulsar NX, Infiniti J30 and a few which never made to our asphalt ecosystem. There are also humorous multi-cultural experiences with his Japanese counterparts - which are great lessons for those uninitiated to other ethnicities and particular business etiquette. The best of all are the hand sketches of the Infiniti J30, Gobi concept vehicle, boat designs and other early development stages. I wish there were more pictures for us right-brainers. A big part of his later chapters deal with how to create an environment that is naturally stimulating for creativity -and some of his methods are not in the studio. If you can remember car lines and wonder why a Nissan and Infiniti grill (or any car for that matter) looks the way it does - this book is for you. FYI - you can probably get essentially the same book in hardback at a used place for the paperback.
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