Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques (Michael Michalko)
One of the popular myths about creativity is that some people just gifted with it and some aren't, and that it's impossible to teach creativity.
This is simply untrue. There are exercises and skills that can help anyone develop their creative faculties.
This book is crammed full of thought experiments and exercises that do just that -- help you become reliably, even systematically, creative.
As an officer in the U.S. Army, Michalko organized a team of NATO intelligence specialists and international academics to research, collect, and categorize all known inventive-thinking methods. His team applied the methods to various NATO military, political, and social problems. Michalko later applied these creative-thinking techniques to problems in the corporate world.
It is a handbook more than a text. Here's the table of contents:
Part One: Linear Thinkertoys
Group A
Chapter Five: False Faces (reversal)
Chapter Six: Slice and Dice (attribute listing)
Chapter Seven: Cherry Split (fractionation)
Chapter Eight: Think Bubbles (mind mapping)
Chapter Nine: SCAMPER (questions)
Group B
Chapter Ten: Tug-of-War (force-field analysis)
Chapter Eleven: Idea Box (morphological analysis)
Chapter Twelve: Idea Grid (FCB grid)
Chapter Thirteen: Lotus Blossom (diagramming)
Chapter Fourteen: Phoenix (questions)
Chapter Fifteen: The great Transpacific Airline and Storm Door Company(matrix)
Chapter Sixteen: Future Fruit (future scenarios)
Group C
Chapter Seventeen: Brutethink (random stimulation)
Chapter Eighteen: Hall of Fame (forced connection)
Chapter Nineteen: Circle of Opportunity (forced connection)
Chapter Twenty: Ideatoons (pattern language)
Chapter Twenty-One: Clever Trevor (talk to a stranger) 0
Part Two: Intuitive Thinkertoys
Chapter Twenty-Two: Chilling Out (relaxation)
Chapter Twenty-Three: Blue Roses (intuition)
Chapter Twenty-Four: The Three B’s (incubation)
Chapter Twenty-Five: rattlesnakes and Roses (analogies)
Chapter Twenty-Six: Stone Soup (fantasy questions)
Chapter Twenty-Seven: True and False (janusian thinking)
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Dreamscape (dreams)
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Da Vinci’s Technique (drawing)
Chapter Thirty: Dali’s Technique (hypnogogic imagery)
Chapter Thirty-One: Not Kansas (imagery)
Chapter Thirty-Two: The Shadow (psychosynthesis)
Chapter Thirty-Three: The Book of the Dead (hieroglyphics)
Part Three: The Spirit of Koinonia
Chapter Thirty-Four: Warming Up
Chapter Thirty-Five: Brainstorming
Chapter Thirty-Six: Orthodox Brainstorming
Chapter Thirty-Seven: Raw Creativity
Part Four: Endtoys
Chapter Thirty-Eight: Murder Board
Chapter Thirty-Nine: You Are Not a Field of Grass