The Creative Priority: Driving Innovative Business in the Real World

What would it be like for you to work in an organization that does not make exceptions for the creative maverick, because there is value in what the maverick stands for, but that provides for the conceptual maverick to become the catalyst who forms the organization? Instead of tolerating creativity, questioning and innovation on the periphery of the organization, outside it's boundaries, you change your business culture to allow creativity, questioning and innovation to permeate and form your core business culture? You shrug off convention. You no longer "reel in the maverick." You are the maverick. You are the supreme collaborative, out of the box forward minded innovative think tank that no longer "deals with" creativity and no longer "deals with" innovation and no longer "deals with questioning" as a method of operating your business. Indeed, your business seeks no longer to control the maverick but lets the maverick control the business. How powerful is that? How can you profess to your employees, peers and clients that you are providing them with the most cutting-edge, innovative, appropriate, and, dare I say, cool experiences, processes and products when you operate centrally within a dogmatically traditional organizational structure? You can't. That environment invariably seeks to "reel in" non-conformity and authoritatively rubber stamp their control over it. It does not provide an arena that permits in reality the necessary opportunity for your people to generate their most profound ideas and concepts - those that have the potential to result in the best product, most thoughtful recommendation, most effective solution, most comprehensive response - those that best solve your client's problem. You are lying to them. It's inevitable that business books retain a particular style of writing. Hirshberg will not win a writing award. But, his candidness of real world successes and failures, which he shares fearlessly make this book remarkable. Read the book. Look at what a remarkable process he formed and the result of that leap and then measure it against how your organization operates.

Wow. This book gives a gret refresh of the way one looks at the business day. No longer do I drone on about how bad my workplace is. I am finding new ways to improve the workplace, and the work I do creatively and effectively. Thank you, Jerry Hirshberg. I once again have a rejuvinated outlook on my career. This is the kind of book that I'm going to read every year to keep my focus.

This is a great book for anyone who is looking to improve the design process in their company. Hirshberg has successfully blended engineering and design endeavors to produce proven products. His approach to fostering design is refreshingly innovative.

Hirshberg was given a rare opportunity. To create a design firm from the ground up. Working from his (not-so-supportive) experiences as a designer at GM, he created NDI - attempting to do right what large firms like GM do wrong. His 11 chapters offer approaches to support his four principles for developing the creative priority in any organization: polarity, unprecendent thinking, beyond the edges, and syntheis. His examples are vivid and intriguing, both from the automotive world as well as from some of NDI's other clients. To get six stars -- I wish the publisher had produced the book more creatively (more color, more pictures, non-traditional format); I wish Hirshberg had included a picture of the pre-school furniture NDI designed (child-like chairs with protective rubber socks sound fascinating). But an enjoyable and educational offering, with some of the best non-fiction writing I have read in some time (describing GM's automotive design in the mid-seventies as "a manufacturer of truly general motors.") Well-done!

Hirshberg's introduction is slow, but necessary -- bear with it. Once the book proper begins, anyone in the working world will immediately try to apply his concepts of creative management to their workplace. Hirshberg's prose is efficient but by no means dull, and he doesn't write in a business vacuum, like many business writers. In fact, while it's valuable as a business resource, this book is as much about philosophy and art as it is business. A fascinating read.