Creative Strategy: Reconnecting Business and Innovation

People tend to think of creativity and strategy as opposites. This book argues that they are far more similar than we might expect. More than this, actively aligning creative and strategic thinking in any enterprise can enable more effective innovation, entrepreneurship, leadership and organizing for the future.

By considering strategy as a creative process (and vice versa), the authors define 'creative strategy' as a mindset which switches between opposing processes and characteristics, and which drives every aspect of the business. Drawing experiences and cases from across this false divide: from the music industry, sports, fashion, Shakespearean theatre companies, creative and media organizations and the military, as well as what we might regard as more mundane providers of mainstream products and services, much can be learned from any of these arenas.

The book is structured around four aspects of strategy - innovation, entrepreneurship, leadership, organization - and four paradoxes of creative thinking - creating vs. discovering (innovation), diligence vs. dilettantism (entrepreneurship), seeing vs. doing (leadership), intensity vs. slack (organization).