Create in a Flash

Are you looking for a complete curriculum that will help you teach a creative problem solving course? 

Then you need Create in a Flash! A Leader’s Recipe for Breakthrough Innovation.

I’m Dr. Roger Firestien,  and I’ve spent the last 42 years teaching, researching, and consulting in the field of Creative Problem-Solving (CPS). I have written six books on the topic, and I’m excited to tell you about this one. 

When my second book, Leading on the Creative Edge, was published in 1997, I sent a copy to my mom and dad in Colorado.  It was hard-bound, with a book jacket, and was published by a great publisher. I was really proud of that book.

When I talked to my dad a few weeks after I had sent the book, I asked him how he liked it. He said,

“Well, I read the first twenty pages and it was pretty good. Then I fell asleep. Where are the pictures?”

“Pictures?”

You see, my Dad was a farmer, and he was a visual thinker. He could plant cornrows so straight that a good archer could shoot an arrow straight down a row and not nick a single blade of corn.

I filed his response. It would turn out to be a great piece of advice over 20 years later.

My colleagues and friends had been urging me to write a new book, to tell my story. They thought I should talk about what it had been like to be in the creativity business for over 40 years, and share what I had learned from working with hundreds of clients and teaching thousands of students. 

In September of 2018, the time had come for me to write that book. I was ready. 

I wanted this book to be different from many of the creativity books that were on the market. I didn’t want it to be heavy with text and difficult to get through. I wanted my next book to be fun, engaging, and inspiring, while still being research-based and practical. I didn’t want to overwhelm the reader with a grocery list of creativity techniques or cliche creativity examples, like the invention of post-its® or the light bulb. Books like that already existed. I’d even written them myself.

My goal with this book was to give the reader the essence of what I had learned from being in this field my entire professional life. I wanted to give them the creativity methods that have worked consistently for me with hundreds of groups. I wanted to share stories of people who I have worked with over the years who have found success using Creative Problem-Solving (CPS) in their businesses and in their lives. 

I wanted this book to be one that my Dad would be eager to read all the way through. So of course I needed short chapters and lots of full-color pictures. 

I wanted the reader to smile and be surprised when they turned the pages. 

By the middle of September 2018, I had hired an art director and an editor. We went to work creating a beautiful, engaging, and fun book with the same research-based foundation in all my work. A year later, on September 19, 2019, we held the book launch party for Create in a Flash: A leader’s recipe for breakthrough innovation at the Buffalo, New York Museum of Science.

Half of Create in a Flash is text, while the other half is pictures. I didn’t want this book to be another training manual. I’d already done that, and this was supposed to be something different. 

But there were some training aspects in Flash. So I produced 20 videos to accompany the book. They demonstrate applying the Creative Problem-Solving process to a real problem. The videos also feature interviews with people that are using Creative Problem-Solving in their lives. 

The videos supplement the book, and I also produced downloadable PDFs that in turn supplement the videos. It all serves as a curriculum for a creativity course, and in fact, I’m using it in my own classes.

I teach at the International Center for Studies in Creativity at SUNY Buffalo State. I am amazed at how much time this book saves and how much easier it is for me to teach the course. I find myself spending much less time explaining specific CPS techniques because there are clear examples provided in the videos.   Here is an example of how to do a warm-up.

In my introductory creativity course, I have the students watch videos demonstrating how I facilitate a specific technique, such as generating creative questions, using forced connections, or applying the Pluses, Potentials, and Concerns technique to an idea. 

In my advanced Creative Problem-Solving facilitation courses, I have students watch the same videos, this time looking for the facilitation nuances that make for a great creativity session. Students have told me that they often review the videos while they are preparing to facilitate a CPS session. 

The chapters in the book are short and provide inspirational examples of creativity in action. Create in a Flash contains everything you need to teach a course in creativity in a university or corporate setting. 

Access to the videos and the PDFs are free, whether you buy the book or not. 

I want you to be able to use this book in a few different ways. You can read it from cover to cover (and those pictures mean you won’t get bored), you can use it as a text for a class in combination with the videos and PDFs for a full curriculum, or if you just need some inspiration, you can open the book and read a few pages of “FYI” (For Your Innovation).

Please follow this link to order the book, review the free videos, or download the writeable PDFs. Enjoy! https://rogerfirestien.com/create-in-a-flash/

Dr. Roger Firestien has taught more people to lead the creative process than anyone else in the world. Roger is senior faculty at the International Center for Studies in Creativity at SUNY Buffalo State and president of Innovation Resources, Inc. He has written six books on innovation. His latest book, Create in A Flash:  A leader’s recipe for breakthrough innovation is available through Amazon or at  Createinaflashbook.com