DISCIPLINED DREAMING:

A Proven System to Drive Breakthrough Creativity

By Josh Linkner

Feature Story Suggestions

Below are some of the key ideas from Josh Linkner’s new book DISCIPLINED DREAMING. Each of these concepts could potentially form the basis for an informative and useful feature story.  Josh would be happy to work with a writer in developing such a story, or could provide a bylined story himself.

Introduction [pp. 1-2]

Josh Linkner is an accomplished jazz musician.  He explains how business success—like good jazz--is most often determined based on creativity and original thought as opposed to technical mastery.  The skills he learned playing jazz have translated perfectly into the business world: thinking on your feet, improvisation, dealing with adversity, working through uncertainty, blending collaboration with individual performance, and most importantly—creativity.  See Succeeding through Improvisation and Risk Taking (pp. 11-13)

The Risky Business of Playing It Safe: Four Factors Fueling the Creativity Arms Race  [pg. 8]

Organizations are constantly in a game of one-upmanship. Companies fight like mad to gain the smallest ounce of competitive advantage, only to have that fleeting win trumped by another competitor's urgency. Each incremental gain becomes zeroed out as global competitors quickly copy and adapt. At the end of the day, the only sustainable competitive advantage—for individuals and companies—is creativity. 

Building Creative Cultures [pg. 89]

There is an undeniable correlation between the most innovative companies and those with cultures that nurture creativity. While these environments were looked down upon in the past as being "soft", establishing a corporate culture that enables team members to express their creativity is now fundamentally linked to business success.  See The Corporate Culture at ePrize [pp. 89-96] and The 7 Rules of Creative Cultures [pp. 96-105]

The Top 6 Creativity Myths (and Truths) [pp. 207-209]

Josh has identified six common myths and seven key blockers that inhibit creativity.  The good news is that each of them can be conquered and removed forever.  Once you break free from the shackles of these obstacles, you will enjoy an overwhelming sense of freedom and your creativity will soar. 

DISCIPLINED DREAMING                                                                                                          

Sidebar/Excerpt Suggestions

Below are somw of the practical exercises Josh Linkner provides in DISCIPLINED DREAMING as part of a complete toolkit for inspiring and developing breakthrough creativity.  They have real takeaway value and could either be used as a sidebar excerpt or developed into a larger story.

Warming Up: The Top Ten Moves [pp. 83-85]

In the same way an athlete or a musician warms up for peak performance at their craft, you will enjoy better results with a quick warm up to get in the zone. Here are the top 10 creativity warm-up exercises.

Five Ways to Engage in the Discovery Stage of Creativity [pp. 125-139]

Discovery is the stage of creativity in which you break free of the straightjacket of we’ve always done it that way, or this is our usual approach, or we don’t have the luxury of trying something new in order to find new approaches and solutions.  There are a myriad of ways to engage in the creative stage known as discovery. Let’s look at a few of the most useful ones: A Different Lens, Immersion, Inflection Points, The Borrowed Idea, The Upside Down Idea, and Patterns.

Jazz Jam: Five Jazz Musician Secrets to Help You Unleash Your Own Fresh Thinking [pp. 155-160]

If there was a PhD for creative sparking, jazz musicians would graduate with high distinction. Smoke-filled, late night jazz clubs are hotbeds of spontaneous creativity. Let's take an inside look at five of the best jazz musician secrets: Trading Fours, Contrast, Mixing it Up, Lean on the Masters, and Substitutions.

The 8 Commandments of Ideation [pp. 164-179]

Josh has scoured the world looking for the best techniques to ignite creativity. Through his research, interviews, nearly 30 years studying improvisation, and having built four technology companies from the ground up, he’s excited to share eight of the most powerful exercises to generate great ideas.

Selecting Your Best Ideas [pp. 186-200]

After you've generated a rich collection of new ideas, it's time to choose the best ones and put them into action. Great ideas are worthless unless they are brought to life. But how do you sort the good from the bad? How do you determine which ones to back and which ones to toss?  There are several techniques executives can use to choose the winning ideas.

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