Disciplined Dreaming: A Proven System to Drive Breakthrough Creativity

“Organizations today can only survive if they harness and monetize the untapped creativity that thrives beneath the surface,” writes Josh Linkner, Founder and Chairman of ePrize, in DISCIPLINED DREAMING: A Proven System to Drive Breakthrough Creativity (February 22, 2011/Jossey-Bass/$26.95).  “Creativity is not just another way for companies to succeed—it is actually a necessity. Without it, organizations may not survive.”

Linkner is a creative powerhouse who has been improvising jazz guitar riffs for audiences since he was 13, and who also created four highly successful high-tech companies over the last 20 years, including GlobalLink New Media, an award-winning web development firm, and ePrize, which has produced over 5,000 industry-leading interactive promotions across 36 countries, for 74 of the Top 100 brands.

DISCIPLINED DREAMING presents a synthesis of techniques that Josh has used and found to be successful in business and in jazz improvisation.  These techniques produce a systematic approach to creativity—a virtual machine for idea generation—that allows companies, teams and individuals to develop, manage, and thoughtfully direct their creativity in order to become more nimble, more adept and more competitive. With DISCIPLINED DREAMING, you will learn how to:

• Break free from myths and barriers to unleash creativity
• Tap into the hidden brainpower inside yourself and your company
• Establish an ongoing system to nurture and harvest your team’s best ideas
• Avoid the costly mistakes of flawed idea selection and measurement
• Increase your ability to deal with ambiguity and uncertainty
• Learn how to adapt more quickly and proactively to changes in the marketplace
• Apply focused creativity to specific business problems of all sizes and shapes

The DISCIPLINED DREAMING system consists of five steps, which Josh explains in detail in the book:

• Step 1: ASK – The first step is to define the creative challenge. Identifying the problem clearly helps to focus the energy of your team and drive curiosity and awareness.
• Step 2: PREPARE – The second step is to prepare the culture, mind, and environment for optimal idea generation.
• Step 3: DISCOVER – The third step is to find inspiration and search for fruitful, surprising sources of ideas. Determining a new and unusual idea-source can catalyze the process of idea generation.
• Step 4: IGNITE – The fourth step is to generate ideas. Here is where we can ignite our creativity and, using powerful new proven techniques, enjoy more and better ideas.
• Step 5: LAUNCH – The fifth step asks the reader to step back and use a framework to evaluate new ideas and put the best ones into action.

Josh has also conducted more than two hundred personal interviews with CEO’s, billionaires, entrepreneurs, artists, musicians, educators, and non-profit leaders, asking them how they generate ideas, manage the creative process, nurture creative cultures, and build their own creative abilities. Their collective experience has been synthesized and incorporated into the five steps.  At the heart of the book are dozens of fun techniques that can be adopted by the reader and put to use immediately.

The DISCIPLINED DREAMING process works for all types and sizes of organizations, from Fortune 100 multinationals to startups to non-profits and governmental agencies. It can be applied to all types of creative challenges, from startling, disruptive, breakthrough innovations to incremental advances and small improvements. The methodology is simple and backed by proven results.