What do you think?
Rate this book
Conceptual Blockbusting: A Guide to Better Ideas
James Adams's unique approach to generating ideas and solving problems has captivated, inspired, and guided thousands of people from all walks of life. Now, twenty-five years after its original publication, Conceptual Blockbusting has never been more relevant, powerful, or fresh. Integrating insights from the worlds of psychology, engineering, management, art, and philosophy, Adams identifies the key blocks (perceptual, emotional, cultural, environmental, intellectual, and expressive) that prevent us from realizing the full potential of our fertile minds. Employing unconventional exercises and other interactive elements, Adams shows individuals, teams, and organizations how to overcome these blocks, embrace alternative ways of thinking about complex problems, and celebrate the joy of creativity. With new examples and contemporary references, Conceptual Blockbusting is guaranteed to introduce a new generation of readers to a world of new possibilities.
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1969
121 people are currently reading
1,436 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 44 reviews
May 13, 2013
I read this book as part of my personal development goals at work. Much of the value of this book is working through the exercises throughout, so if you are really interested in the material, you should read it for yourself. My full summary, including a description of all the blocks Adams describes and how to avoid them can be found .
Adams motivation in writing this book is to introduce people to ways to improve their idea generating ability. Adams makes the claim that having good ideas does not require genius (although that does not hurt). Most people fail to have good ideas because of conceptual blocks. A conceptual block is anything that blocks someone from having a good idea.
The first half of the book describes different types of conceptual blocks and contains a number of exercises to help the reader understand the blocks and how to avoid them. Some of the exercises are best done with more than one person; I was not able to do those.
The second half of the book discuses strategies for overcoming conceptual blocks on the individual, group, and organizational level. Although the first half the book also talks about how to avoid blocks, the second half of the book goes into more detail about specific strategies for avoiding blocks.
Not all blocks apply to all people. Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses. Some blocks will seem nonsensical and learning about others may feel like a revelation.
It is also important to note that Adams does not claim that creativity is the be all and end all. However, he chose to focus on creativity in his book because he feels that, in the context of the group he is writing for (Americans with at least a fairly decent education), creativity is an underdeveloped skill compared to rationality and diligent hard work. All of these factors are important for success. First you need to have a creative idea, then you need to check whether or not it is reasonable, and then you need to implement it.
Adams has written a book that manages to cram a lot of information on creativity into 200 pages. He is clear about which of his statements are scientifically justified, which are justified by his experience and the experience of others, and which are just his own ideas. Overall, the book provides an accessible and concise overview of different blocks to creativity and how to overcome them. (Plus, the exercises are fun!)
Adams motivation in writing this book is to introduce people to ways to improve their idea generating ability. Adams makes the claim that having good ideas does not require genius (although that does not hurt). Most people fail to have good ideas because of conceptual blocks. A conceptual block is anything that blocks someone from having a good idea.
The first half of the book describes different types of conceptual blocks and contains a number of exercises to help the reader understand the blocks and how to avoid them. Some of the exercises are best done with more than one person; I was not able to do those.
The second half of the book discuses strategies for overcoming conceptual blocks on the individual, group, and organizational level. Although the first half the book also talks about how to avoid blocks, the second half of the book goes into more detail about specific strategies for avoiding blocks.
Not all blocks apply to all people. Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses. Some blocks will seem nonsensical and learning about others may feel like a revelation.
It is also important to note that Adams does not claim that creativity is the be all and end all. However, he chose to focus on creativity in his book because he feels that, in the context of the group he is writing for (Americans with at least a fairly decent education), creativity is an underdeveloped skill compared to rationality and diligent hard work. All of these factors are important for success. First you need to have a creative idea, then you need to check whether or not it is reasonable, and then you need to implement it.
Adams has written a book that manages to cram a lot of information on creativity into 200 pages. He is clear about which of his statements are scientifically justified, which are justified by his experience and the experience of others, and which are just his own ideas. Overall, the book provides an accessible and concise overview of different blocks to creativity and how to overcome them. (Plus, the exercises are fun!)
October 7, 2015
Some ideas here and there, personally I was bored at times
a lot of exercises .. many are group exercises
Notes:
Chapter 1: Introduction
The author’s goal is to make us aware of the creative process, blocks that inhibit it and tricks that we can use to overcome these blocks. Our reaction often to a problem is to get rid of it and quickly throw solutions at it, the author calls it “hit and run�. We do this instead of spending some time to actually understand the problem and solve it correctly
Outline to the rest of the book
Chapter 2-5: Conceptual Blocks (mental walls that block the problem solver)
Chapter 6-7: Techniques are will allow you to overcome these blocks
Chapter 8: Conceptualization: (the process by which one has ideas)
Chapter 9: Blocks to creativity at the organizational level
Final Section, resources/books on creativity
Chapter 2: Perceptual Blocks
- Stereotyping: example: the author believes he can accomplish more wearing a tie
- Difficulty in isolating the problem: people getting rid of the symptoms instead of solving the real problem
-Tendency to Delimit the Problem Area Poorly: example: the classic draw four lines without lifting the pencil. You will never find a solution if you constrain your problem area
- Inability to see the Problem from Various Viewpoints: Vertical vs Lateral thinking
- Saturation: Missing out on details because you’re saturated with the data
- Failure to Utilize all Sensory Inputs
Chapter 3: Emotional Blocks
- Fear of Taking a Risk: One solution is to simply write down the consequences of taking that risk
- No Appetite for Chaos: The inability to tolerate ambiguity
- Judging Rather than Generating Ideas
- Inability or Unwillingness to Incubate: Allow the mind to struggle with the problem, forget about it and then come back to it. Incubation is important
- Lack of Challenge Versus Excessive Zeal
- Reality and Fantasy: You should not only be able to vividly form complete images but to also manipulate them
- Of Flow and Angst: At certain times, you can in be in “Flow� totally consumed with your tasks and at times. How to increase those periods of flow?
Chapter 4: Cultural and Environmental Blocks
Cultural blocks: Taboos, “playfulness is for children only�, problem solving is serious business, reason and logic are good, intuition is not. Tradition is preferable to change.
Environmental blocks: distractions, lack of trust, lack of support.
Many psychologists believe that children are more creative than adults only because adults are more aware of the practical constraints
Chapter 5: Intellectual and Expressive Blocks
- Solving the problem using a different language: sticking to one language instead of trying all three (math/verbal/visual) (folding a paper 50 times game if you use visual imagery instead of math you won’t solve it)
- inadequate using of intellectual problem solving strategies
- lack or incorrect information
- inadequate language skill to express and record ideas
Chapter 6: Alternate Thinking Language
- This chapter stresses on alternating between a verbal, a mathematical and a visual approach to solving problems
- One of the things you can do to enhance your seeing ability is to see things and then draw them
- Visual imagery is both how sharp and filled the details are in your image and the second is control (how well you can manipulate them)
Chapter 7: Kinds of Block Busting
- Maintain a questioning attitude (overcome the block that asking questions will make you look stupid, it’s not)
- Work on the right problem (write the problems and the draw connections between them, sometimes it takes an effort to find the real problem)
- Don’t rely on memory Making, make a list of things
- Many creativity techniques have to do with how we can divert ourselves from accepting the first answer and considering other alternatives. One way is to list all the attributes of the object and under each attribute list all the possible alternatives (Improve a ball-point pen: list all attributes: Cylindrical Plastic .. and so on. Now list under each property the possible alternatives (Square, Beaded �) and (Metal, Glass, Paper ..).
- Often people tend to want to solve a big problem (solving the air pollution problem) instead make a bug list of specific things that are getting in your way everyday, this list will then spark ideas.
- Another type of list making is making a check list of things to try when solving a problem, for mathematics for example this could be (multiply, divide, eliminate, unify � and so on)
- Interacting with other people to get their ideas
- Crossing disciplines, cultures and changing environments
Chapter 8: Groups
Chapter 9: Organizations
Book Recommendations from the author
Books about creativity
Creativity and Beyond by Robert Paul Weiner
The Act of Creation, by Arthur Koestler
The Creative Process, edited by Brewster Ghiselin
The Mathematician's Mind, by Jacques Hadamard
The Double Helix, by James Watson
The Life and Science of Richard Feynman by James
The Starship and the Canoe, by Kenneth Brower
The Soul of a New Machine, by Tracy Kidder
Origins of Genius, by Dean Keith Simonton
Books about thinking
Mindfulness, by Ellen J. Langer
Intelligence, Creativity by J. P. Guilford
Frames of Mind, by Howard Gardner
Breakthrough Creativity, by Lynne Levesque
Books about memory
Don't Forget, by Danielle C. Lapp
Memory, by Larry R. Squire and Eric R. Kandel
Books about psychology
Creativity in Context, by Teresa M. Amabile
Creativity, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
On Creativity and the Unconscious, by Sigmund Freud
Books about the brain
The Brain, by Richard E Thompson
Maps Of The Mind, by C. Hampden Turner
A Natural History of the Senses, by Diane Ackerman
Creativity in business
The Knowing-Doing Doing Gap, by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton
Stream Analysis, by Jerry Porras
jamming, by John Kao
The Wisdom of Teams, by Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith
a lot of exercises .. many are group exercises
Notes:
Chapter 1: Introduction
The author’s goal is to make us aware of the creative process, blocks that inhibit it and tricks that we can use to overcome these blocks. Our reaction often to a problem is to get rid of it and quickly throw solutions at it, the author calls it “hit and run�. We do this instead of spending some time to actually understand the problem and solve it correctly
Outline to the rest of the book
Chapter 2-5: Conceptual Blocks (mental walls that block the problem solver)
Chapter 6-7: Techniques are will allow you to overcome these blocks
Chapter 8: Conceptualization: (the process by which one has ideas)
Chapter 9: Blocks to creativity at the organizational level
Final Section, resources/books on creativity
Chapter 2: Perceptual Blocks
- Stereotyping: example: the author believes he can accomplish more wearing a tie
- Difficulty in isolating the problem: people getting rid of the symptoms instead of solving the real problem
-Tendency to Delimit the Problem Area Poorly: example: the classic draw four lines without lifting the pencil. You will never find a solution if you constrain your problem area
- Inability to see the Problem from Various Viewpoints: Vertical vs Lateral thinking
- Saturation: Missing out on details because you’re saturated with the data
- Failure to Utilize all Sensory Inputs
Chapter 3: Emotional Blocks
- Fear of Taking a Risk: One solution is to simply write down the consequences of taking that risk
- No Appetite for Chaos: The inability to tolerate ambiguity
- Judging Rather than Generating Ideas
- Inability or Unwillingness to Incubate: Allow the mind to struggle with the problem, forget about it and then come back to it. Incubation is important
- Lack of Challenge Versus Excessive Zeal
- Reality and Fantasy: You should not only be able to vividly form complete images but to also manipulate them
- Of Flow and Angst: At certain times, you can in be in “Flow� totally consumed with your tasks and at times. How to increase those periods of flow?
Chapter 4: Cultural and Environmental Blocks
Cultural blocks: Taboos, “playfulness is for children only�, problem solving is serious business, reason and logic are good, intuition is not. Tradition is preferable to change.
Environmental blocks: distractions, lack of trust, lack of support.
Many psychologists believe that children are more creative than adults only because adults are more aware of the practical constraints
Chapter 5: Intellectual and Expressive Blocks
- Solving the problem using a different language: sticking to one language instead of trying all three (math/verbal/visual) (folding a paper 50 times game if you use visual imagery instead of math you won’t solve it)
- inadequate using of intellectual problem solving strategies
- lack or incorrect information
- inadequate language skill to express and record ideas
Chapter 6: Alternate Thinking Language
- This chapter stresses on alternating between a verbal, a mathematical and a visual approach to solving problems
- One of the things you can do to enhance your seeing ability is to see things and then draw them
- Visual imagery is both how sharp and filled the details are in your image and the second is control (how well you can manipulate them)
Chapter 7: Kinds of Block Busting
- Maintain a questioning attitude (overcome the block that asking questions will make you look stupid, it’s not)
- Work on the right problem (write the problems and the draw connections between them, sometimes it takes an effort to find the real problem)
- Don’t rely on memory Making, make a list of things
- Many creativity techniques have to do with how we can divert ourselves from accepting the first answer and considering other alternatives. One way is to list all the attributes of the object and under each attribute list all the possible alternatives (Improve a ball-point pen: list all attributes: Cylindrical Plastic .. and so on. Now list under each property the possible alternatives (Square, Beaded �) and (Metal, Glass, Paper ..).
- Often people tend to want to solve a big problem (solving the air pollution problem) instead make a bug list of specific things that are getting in your way everyday, this list will then spark ideas.
- Another type of list making is making a check list of things to try when solving a problem, for mathematics for example this could be (multiply, divide, eliminate, unify � and so on)
- Interacting with other people to get their ideas
- Crossing disciplines, cultures and changing environments
Chapter 8: Groups
Chapter 9: Organizations
Book Recommendations from the author
Books about creativity
Creativity and Beyond by Robert Paul Weiner
The Act of Creation, by Arthur Koestler
The Creative Process, edited by Brewster Ghiselin
The Mathematician's Mind, by Jacques Hadamard
The Double Helix, by James Watson
The Life and Science of Richard Feynman by James
The Starship and the Canoe, by Kenneth Brower
The Soul of a New Machine, by Tracy Kidder
Origins of Genius, by Dean Keith Simonton
Books about thinking
Mindfulness, by Ellen J. Langer
Intelligence, Creativity by J. P. Guilford
Frames of Mind, by Howard Gardner
Breakthrough Creativity, by Lynne Levesque
Books about memory
Don't Forget, by Danielle C. Lapp
Memory, by Larry R. Squire and Eric R. Kandel
Books about psychology
Creativity in Context, by Teresa M. Amabile
Creativity, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
On Creativity and the Unconscious, by Sigmund Freud
Books about the brain
The Brain, by Richard E Thompson
Maps Of The Mind, by C. Hampden Turner
A Natural History of the Senses, by Diane Ackerman
Creativity in business
The Knowing-Doing Doing Gap, by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton
Stream Analysis, by Jerry Porras
jamming, by John Kao
The Wisdom of Teams, by Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith
January 22, 2015
There is a lot of interesting content in this book, but I'm not sure it actually made me more creative. The writing is _slightly_ meandering and academic in style, a bit like a research survey paper, but the content within is genuinely valuable. Just the idea of thinking about *how* you come up with a solution (visual thinking, mathematical thinking, deduction, induction, etc), rather than what the solution turns out to be, is a pretty powerful exercise. The list of blocks that get in the way of creative thinking are also useful, and the discussion of the psychology around them is fascinating, but I walked away without a keen awareness of how to get past all of these blocks, other than brainstorming and making lists. That said, perhaps the most powerful aspect of the book is to treat creativity as a skill, and one that can be honed, and perhaps the mere awareness of that fact will be enough to get better over time.
Some good quotes from the book:
We have a one-watt mind in a megawatt world. We cannot process all of the data available to us in raw form. The mind, therefore, depends heavily on structures, models, and stereotypes.
The natural response to a problem seems to be to try to get rid of it by finding an answer--often taking the first answer that occurs and pursuing it because of one’s reluctance to spend the time and mental effort needed to conjure up a richer storehouse of alternatives from which to choose.
Perceptual blocks are obstacles that prevent the problem-solver from clearly perceiving either the problem itself or the information needed to solve the problem.
Once a label (professor, housewife, black, chair, butterfly, automobile, laxative) has been applied, people are less likely to notice the actual qualities or attributes of what is being labeled.
(From New Think by Edward de Bono):
Logic is the tool that is used to dig holes deeper and bigger, to make them altogether better holes. But if the hole is in the wrong place, then no amount of improvement is going to put it in the right place. No matter how obvious this may seem to every digger, it is still easier to go on digging in the same place than to start all over again in a new place. Vertical thinking is digging the same hole deeper; lateral thinking is trying again elsewhere.
Fear to make a mistake, to fail, or to take a risk is perhaps the most general and common emotional block. Most of us have grown up rewarded when we produce the “right� answer and punished if we make a mistake. When we fail we are made to realize that we have let others down (usually someone we love). Similarly we are taught to live safely (a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, a penny saved is a penny earned) and avoid risk whenever possible. Obviously, when you produce and try to sell a creative idea you are taking a risk: of making a mistake, failing, making an ass of yourself, losing money, hurting yourself, or whatever.
In a sense, problem-solving is bringing order to chaos. A desire for order is therefore necessary. However, the ability to tolerate chaos is a must.
If you analyze or judge too early in the problem-solving process, you will reject many ideas. This is detrimental for two reasons. First of all, newly formed ideas are fragile and imperfect--they need time to mature and acquire the detail needed to make them believable. Secondly, as we will discuss later, ideas often lead to other ideas.
You should allow the mind to struggle with problems over time. Incubation is important in problem-solving. It is poor planning not to allow adequate time for incubation in the solution of an important problem. It is also important to be able to relax in the midst of problem-solving. Your overall compulsiveness is less fanatical when you are relaxed, and the mind is more likely to deal with seemingly “silly� combinations of thoughts. If you are never relaxed, your mind is usually on guard against non-serious activities, with resulting difficulties in the type of thinking necessary for fluent and flexible conceptualization.
Arthur Koestler was an important writer who among other topics, treated conceptualization. In an essay, “The Three Domains of Creativity�, he identified these “domains� as artistic originality (which he called the “ah!� reaction), scientific discovery (the “aha!� reaction), and comic inspiration (the “haha!� reaction). He defined creative acts as the combination of previously unrelated structures in such a way that you get more out of the emergent whole than you have put in. He explained comic inspiration, for example, as stemming from “the interaction of two mutually exclusive associative contexts.� As in creative artistic and scientific acts, two ideas have to be brought together that are not ordinarily combined. This is one of the essentials of creative thinking. In the particular case of humor, according to Koestler, the interaction causes us “to perceive the situation in two self-consistent but habitually incompatible frames of reference.� [...] The critical point of interest here is that a similar reaction (laughter) may greet an original idea. A concept may be so contrary to the logical progress of the problem solution, precedent, or common intuition, that it may cause laughter. In fact any answer to a problem releases tension. Your unbelievably insightful solution to a problem may therefore be greeted with giggles and hoots, not only from others but even from yourself.
The Introduction to Process Notebook, also by Interaction Associates, summarized the situation as follows:
Just as we use physical tools for physical tasks, we employ conceptual tools for conceptual tasks. To familiarize yourself with a tool, you may experiment with it, test it in different situations, and evaluate its usefulness. The same method can be applied to conceptual tools. Our ability as thinkers is dependent on our range and skill with our own tools.
We learn as we grow older that it is good to be smart. Smartness is often associated with the amount of knowledge we possess. A question is an admission that we do not know or understand something. We therefore leave ourselves open to suspicion that we are not omniscient. Thus, we see the almost incredible ability of students to sit totally confused in a class in a university that costs thousands of dollars a year to attend and not ask questions. Thus, we find people at cocktail parties listening politely to conversations they do not understand, and people in highly technical fields accepting jargon they do not understand.
A camel is a horse designed by committee.
In authoritative systems individuals attempt to perform well according to their job descriptions. But how many job descriptions contain the phrase “take risks�?
It is not too difficult in any large organization to find people whose job is to prevent mistakes.
Bob Sutton, an organizational behavior professor at Stanford, is fond of saying that non-innovative companies reward success, punish failure, and accept inaction. Innovative companies reward both success and failure (assuming it follows a valiant attempt) and punish inaction.
Some good quotes from the book:
We have a one-watt mind in a megawatt world. We cannot process all of the data available to us in raw form. The mind, therefore, depends heavily on structures, models, and stereotypes.
The natural response to a problem seems to be to try to get rid of it by finding an answer--often taking the first answer that occurs and pursuing it because of one’s reluctance to spend the time and mental effort needed to conjure up a richer storehouse of alternatives from which to choose.
Perceptual blocks are obstacles that prevent the problem-solver from clearly perceiving either the problem itself or the information needed to solve the problem.
Once a label (professor, housewife, black, chair, butterfly, automobile, laxative) has been applied, people are less likely to notice the actual qualities or attributes of what is being labeled.
(From New Think by Edward de Bono):
Logic is the tool that is used to dig holes deeper and bigger, to make them altogether better holes. But if the hole is in the wrong place, then no amount of improvement is going to put it in the right place. No matter how obvious this may seem to every digger, it is still easier to go on digging in the same place than to start all over again in a new place. Vertical thinking is digging the same hole deeper; lateral thinking is trying again elsewhere.
Fear to make a mistake, to fail, or to take a risk is perhaps the most general and common emotional block. Most of us have grown up rewarded when we produce the “right� answer and punished if we make a mistake. When we fail we are made to realize that we have let others down (usually someone we love). Similarly we are taught to live safely (a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, a penny saved is a penny earned) and avoid risk whenever possible. Obviously, when you produce and try to sell a creative idea you are taking a risk: of making a mistake, failing, making an ass of yourself, losing money, hurting yourself, or whatever.
In a sense, problem-solving is bringing order to chaos. A desire for order is therefore necessary. However, the ability to tolerate chaos is a must.
If you analyze or judge too early in the problem-solving process, you will reject many ideas. This is detrimental for two reasons. First of all, newly formed ideas are fragile and imperfect--they need time to mature and acquire the detail needed to make them believable. Secondly, as we will discuss later, ideas often lead to other ideas.
You should allow the mind to struggle with problems over time. Incubation is important in problem-solving. It is poor planning not to allow adequate time for incubation in the solution of an important problem. It is also important to be able to relax in the midst of problem-solving. Your overall compulsiveness is less fanatical when you are relaxed, and the mind is more likely to deal with seemingly “silly� combinations of thoughts. If you are never relaxed, your mind is usually on guard against non-serious activities, with resulting difficulties in the type of thinking necessary for fluent and flexible conceptualization.
Arthur Koestler was an important writer who among other topics, treated conceptualization. In an essay, “The Three Domains of Creativity�, he identified these “domains� as artistic originality (which he called the “ah!� reaction), scientific discovery (the “aha!� reaction), and comic inspiration (the “haha!� reaction). He defined creative acts as the combination of previously unrelated structures in such a way that you get more out of the emergent whole than you have put in. He explained comic inspiration, for example, as stemming from “the interaction of two mutually exclusive associative contexts.� As in creative artistic and scientific acts, two ideas have to be brought together that are not ordinarily combined. This is one of the essentials of creative thinking. In the particular case of humor, according to Koestler, the interaction causes us “to perceive the situation in two self-consistent but habitually incompatible frames of reference.� [...] The critical point of interest here is that a similar reaction (laughter) may greet an original idea. A concept may be so contrary to the logical progress of the problem solution, precedent, or common intuition, that it may cause laughter. In fact any answer to a problem releases tension. Your unbelievably insightful solution to a problem may therefore be greeted with giggles and hoots, not only from others but even from yourself.
The Introduction to Process Notebook, also by Interaction Associates, summarized the situation as follows:
Just as we use physical tools for physical tasks, we employ conceptual tools for conceptual tasks. To familiarize yourself with a tool, you may experiment with it, test it in different situations, and evaluate its usefulness. The same method can be applied to conceptual tools. Our ability as thinkers is dependent on our range and skill with our own tools.
We learn as we grow older that it is good to be smart. Smartness is often associated with the amount of knowledge we possess. A question is an admission that we do not know or understand something. We therefore leave ourselves open to suspicion that we are not omniscient. Thus, we see the almost incredible ability of students to sit totally confused in a class in a university that costs thousands of dollars a year to attend and not ask questions. Thus, we find people at cocktail parties listening politely to conversations they do not understand, and people in highly technical fields accepting jargon they do not understand.
A camel is a horse designed by committee.
In authoritative systems individuals attempt to perform well according to their job descriptions. But how many job descriptions contain the phrase “take risks�?
It is not too difficult in any large organization to find people whose job is to prevent mistakes.
Bob Sutton, an organizational behavior professor at Stanford, is fond of saying that non-innovative companies reward success, punish failure, and accept inaction. Innovative companies reward both success and failure (assuming it follows a valiant attempt) and punish inaction.
August 29, 2024
First assigned book for my MBA. Big plus that I get to help my reading challenge that way.
The book is alright, but it’s not as insightful as I would have hoped, the writing style is also lacking in clarity at times and the author has a tendency to ramble on a bit. Still, it’s good to be aware of classic creative thinking blocks both on an individual level as well as a group level. Not a bad read, but also not a mind melter.
The book is alright, but it’s not as insightful as I would have hoped, the writing style is also lacking in clarity at times and the author has a tendency to ramble on a bit. Still, it’s good to be aware of classic creative thinking blocks both on an individual level as well as a group level. Not a bad read, but also not a mind melter.
September 10, 2017
I feel like more of these how-to creativity books should gain popularity. I feel there's generally a gap in our education that we need to fill.
Pros:
+ thought-provoking exercises
+ lists of creativity inhibitors, usually blind spots, ranging from personal emotional issues to cultural stereotypes and taboos
+ trying to bust the myth that creativity can't be taught. Showing how in some cases creativity may even be achieved by algorithmic methods
Cons:
- I would have liked the book to cite some more studies
- some passages are for some reason a difficult read. It took too much time to finish the book, with long hiatuses.
Pros:
+ thought-provoking exercises
+ lists of creativity inhibitors, usually blind spots, ranging from personal emotional issues to cultural stereotypes and taboos
+ trying to bust the myth that creativity can't be taught. Showing how in some cases creativity may even be achieved by algorithmic methods
Cons:
- I would have liked the book to cite some more studies
- some passages are for some reason a difficult read. It took too much time to finish the book, with long hiatuses.
May 26, 2011
Excellent book for remove mental blocks and reexamine ways we thinking to solve problems.
October 29, 2015
It took me too mush time to read this book to the extent that I cannot review it..
December 12, 2017
This is one of those books you'll want to read once a year. It provides practical steps for expanding your mind, teaches you to think about thinking, and helps you identify "conceptual blocks". These blocks are limiting your ideas and keeping you from reaching higher levels of creativity. The subject of the book seems a bit elementary based on the title - "Conceptual Blockbusting", but there is a lot to be learned. Don't assume it is just another book about problem solving.
Practical steps for expanding your mind
This book will help you get unstuck when problem solving. We all fall into familiar thinking patterns when we are trying to solve problems. Often times we just need to apply a different thinking strategy or language (visual, mathematical, verbal, etc) in order to see the problem in a different way and help get unstuck. Adams does a great job of proving and reinforcing the concepts with exercises throughout the book. I was surprised by how often I fell right into the traps of these exercises and how well they highlighted
my familiar (and limiting) thinking patterns.
Thinking about thinking
The ideas in this book are very closely related to mindfulness, but with an emphasis toward problem solving and creativity. Adams teaches us to think about thinking in the same way that a golfer would think about his golf form. There are certainly better forms of thinking that can be identified and practiced. In fact, Adams argues that it is similar to a muscle that can be exercised and strengthened.
Identify "Conceptual blocks"
You will start to realize all the conceptual "blocks" that are obstructing on your ideas. These include perceptual blocks like stereotyping, delimiting the problem too closely, inability to see the problem from various viewpoints. They include emotional blocks like the fear of taking a risk, no appetite for chaos,
and judging rather than generating new ideas. They also include cultural and environmental blocks like taboos, traditions and changes, and non-supportive environments. A lot of these blocks may seem intuitive, but it's important to remember them and identify them in our thinking patterns.
Conclusion
I wish this book was a little better organized and had a summary at the end. It would be nice to go back and review the conceptual blocks. Also, the pictures and diagrams were fun and interesting, but seemed mostly random. Overall, I highly recommend reading this book to expose the mental blocks which are holding back your ideas. You'll have a surge of new ideas after reading it and you'll start looking at your problems in new and useful ways.
Practical steps for expanding your mind
This book will help you get unstuck when problem solving. We all fall into familiar thinking patterns when we are trying to solve problems. Often times we just need to apply a different thinking strategy or language (visual, mathematical, verbal, etc) in order to see the problem in a different way and help get unstuck. Adams does a great job of proving and reinforcing the concepts with exercises throughout the book. I was surprised by how often I fell right into the traps of these exercises and how well they highlighted
my familiar (and limiting) thinking patterns.
Thinking about thinking
The ideas in this book are very closely related to mindfulness, but with an emphasis toward problem solving and creativity. Adams teaches us to think about thinking in the same way that a golfer would think about his golf form. There are certainly better forms of thinking that can be identified and practiced. In fact, Adams argues that it is similar to a muscle that can be exercised and strengthened.
Identify "Conceptual blocks"
You will start to realize all the conceptual "blocks" that are obstructing on your ideas. These include perceptual blocks like stereotyping, delimiting the problem too closely, inability to see the problem from various viewpoints. They include emotional blocks like the fear of taking a risk, no appetite for chaos,
and judging rather than generating new ideas. They also include cultural and environmental blocks like taboos, traditions and changes, and non-supportive environments. A lot of these blocks may seem intuitive, but it's important to remember them and identify them in our thinking patterns.
Conclusion
I wish this book was a little better organized and had a summary at the end. It would be nice to go back and review the conceptual blocks. Also, the pictures and diagrams were fun and interesting, but seemed mostly random. Overall, I highly recommend reading this book to expose the mental blocks which are holding back your ideas. You'll have a surge of new ideas after reading it and you'll start looking at your problems in new and useful ways.
October 7, 2017
More a summary than a review:
As James L. Adams opens the preface for the first edition of Conceptual Blockbusting, in 1974, "Few people like problems". We try to avoid them as much as possible and we tend to get away with the first "good enough" solution we can find. Doing so, we may lose the value of potentially better, more elegant solutions that were not the first to come to our minds.
James L. Adams argues that our ability to generate ideas is much like any other ability: it can be trained. When facing a problem, our brain hides most of the idea-generation process in the same way it hides the move-generation process when trying to hit a ball with a baseball bat. Becoming conscious of this process is the first step to improve it and the first step become proficient problem-solver.
The books then takes on the hard task of making us realize what hinders our thinking ability. James L. Adams calls these obstacles conceptual blocks.They are the mental walls that block the problem solver from correctly perceiving a problem or conceiving its solution. Everyone has a certain number of blocks, and often, becoming conscious of them is the only needed step to overcome them. Conceptual blocks come from ourselves, our education, our environment, our culture... How can they affect our thinking ability? They live inside our ego and super-ego, our mental guards that are able to prevent insane or non-acceptable thoughts to come to our conscious minds.
The author encourages us to become skilled in several thinking languages instead of always picking the one we're comfortable with. These languages include verbal, visual, mathematical, sensory languages (verbal and mathematical are usually the most developed, because of cultural bias). We also benefit from using broad approaches that do not favor analysis over synthesis, convergence over divergence or deduction over induction. That is, we must be able to use our left mind (artistic) when needed and our right mind (rationale) when needed. Having a bias towards one or the other will often prevent us from being creative.
There is also a set of techniques that can be used, along with the knowledge of conceptual blocks and thinking approaches, to be a more proficient problem solver. These techniques include having a questioning attitude, identifying the right problem (the root cause) instead of solving the easiest to solve, list-making (with the focus on being flexible as well as fluent, that is generate various ideas and not only a large quantity of similar ideas), using other people ideas, changing environment.
As James L. Adams opens the preface for the first edition of Conceptual Blockbusting, in 1974, "Few people like problems". We try to avoid them as much as possible and we tend to get away with the first "good enough" solution we can find. Doing so, we may lose the value of potentially better, more elegant solutions that were not the first to come to our minds.
James L. Adams argues that our ability to generate ideas is much like any other ability: it can be trained. When facing a problem, our brain hides most of the idea-generation process in the same way it hides the move-generation process when trying to hit a ball with a baseball bat. Becoming conscious of this process is the first step to improve it and the first step become proficient problem-solver.
The books then takes on the hard task of making us realize what hinders our thinking ability. James L. Adams calls these obstacles conceptual blocks.They are the mental walls that block the problem solver from correctly perceiving a problem or conceiving its solution. Everyone has a certain number of blocks, and often, becoming conscious of them is the only needed step to overcome them. Conceptual blocks come from ourselves, our education, our environment, our culture... How can they affect our thinking ability? They live inside our ego and super-ego, our mental guards that are able to prevent insane or non-acceptable thoughts to come to our conscious minds.
The author encourages us to become skilled in several thinking languages instead of always picking the one we're comfortable with. These languages include verbal, visual, mathematical, sensory languages (verbal and mathematical are usually the most developed, because of cultural bias). We also benefit from using broad approaches that do not favor analysis over synthesis, convergence over divergence or deduction over induction. That is, we must be able to use our left mind (artistic) when needed and our right mind (rationale) when needed. Having a bias towards one or the other will often prevent us from being creative.
There is also a set of techniques that can be used, along with the knowledge of conceptual blocks and thinking approaches, to be a more proficient problem solver. These techniques include having a questioning attitude, identifying the right problem (the root cause) instead of solving the easiest to solve, list-making (with the focus on being flexible as well as fluent, that is generate various ideas and not only a large quantity of similar ideas), using other people ideas, changing environment.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 6, 2022
Conceptual Blockbusting by James L. Adams is an enjoyable book which makes the reader think about thinking. It is a short book and quite fun to read. There are some good works of art, doodles and cartoons that accompany various chapters (which more books should have). The subject matter of the book is about creativity and making the reader cognizant about the thought process.
The ardent reader with interests about this can meditate on their own ways of thinking and strive to improve them through what is contained in this book. The narrative is laced with suggested group exercises, many of which seem fun and could serve as party games (apart from highlighting various aspects of creativity and thinking).
The ardent reader with interests about this can meditate on their own ways of thinking and strive to improve them through what is contained in this book. The narrative is laced with suggested group exercises, many of which seem fun and could serve as party games (apart from highlighting various aspects of creativity and thinking).
July 4, 2022
As I write this review I just want to point out that the book I am reviewing is Conceptual Blockbusting a guide to better ideas second edition. They didn't have any other options so I am assuming that I am on the correct page. In the event I am mistaken I just wanted to make everybody aware of that. I really enjoyed this book. I am putty and the author's hands when I am not only learning but I am able to interact because they have exercises and mapped out for us. I really liked the spin on the given examples that stretched our mind and encouraged us to see things from various perspectives. That is definitely one of my favorite ways of challenging my mind.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 19, 2019
3 stars - I liked it
The book does not fail at delivering a set of tools to bust up you creativity. A lot of them are based on simple rules (like Synthetics). Some of them are truly person-dependent (I failed to fail the quiz with a taboo), some of them, when followed, will just give you better results. Parts related to groups and organizations will be hard to follow with the bottom-up movement and would require a lot of changes from the top.
It's not a must-read, but if you've never read a book about creativity this might it.
The book does not fail at delivering a set of tools to bust up you creativity. A lot of them are based on simple rules (like Synthetics). Some of them are truly person-dependent (I failed to fail the quiz with a taboo), some of them, when followed, will just give you better results. Parts related to groups and organizations will be hard to follow with the bottom-up movement and would require a lot of changes from the top.
It's not a must-read, but if you've never read a book about creativity this might it.
October 3, 2023
The material is good and the author's voice is easygoing. However, the book itself was a dense read for me that took a year and a half to finish. There's so much to go through and think about that it is hard to read a lot at once. Even now that I'm done, I wish there were podcasts or YouTube videos of the professor's lectures that I could listen to in addition to reading because I still don't think I have had enough exposure to the material to make it stick.
January 30, 2018
I read this one for a class. It definitely has some interesting brain teasers and questions the way you formulate and solve problems. My main criticism would be that it's hard to see how it really fits into other literature I've read about the engineering problem solving process, management, etc. But perhaps that's the point.
April 6, 2025
most interesting takeaway: people unconsciously choose a mode of thinking when approaching a problem (math, visual, verbal, etc). this is a conceptual block that stops us from being more creative. Knowing these biases can help arrive at a better solution.
very practical good if you are designing a system
very practical good if you are designing a system
October 24, 2017
The general ideas in this book were decent but it took a long time to get through. It's not really a book that did a good job holding my attention; I found myself putting it down and picking it back up over a years time.
November 18, 2020
This is a really great book. A few years back, Brian Eno got me thinking that it was okay for artists to be scientists (or at least have a serious interest in science). James L. Adams just convinced me that scientists (in particular, those in the applied sciences) can be artists.
June 16, 2019
One of my favorite books on creativity. It has exercises that help you see creative ways of solving problems. Read it twice, once in 2013 and once in 2015. Will probably read it again soon.
July 18, 2019
Not my favorite. It was ok at first, but then started reading like a textbook, which it probably was.
October 11, 2020
much advertised, but not so good as i expected.
September 17, 2021
Excellent basic grounding in both those things that tend to inhibit our problem solving abilities and what we can do to work around them!
December 17, 2021
Very good about creativity and the surrounding process, and also about problem framing as a good start.
January 22, 2022
Interesting ideas. My interest fizzled out for the last third/quarter
November 2, 2024
Great ideas for improving one's own creativity and for improving creativity in groups and organizations.
January 1, 2017
Although I didn't do all (or even most) of the exercises, I still found the book fascinating and enlightening. The range of areas covered is impressive for a book of this size and the reader's guide at the end looks like a gold mine for further reading.
September 8, 2022
This book is ok. It does - though - allow one to think outside the box.
June 21, 2015
Interesting read! A thought to ponder on taken from a personal letter to a friend by Schiller. "The reason for your complaint(about not being creative) lies, it seems to me, in the constraint which your intellect imposes upon your imagination. Here, I will make an observation, and illustrate it by an allegory. Apparently, it is not good and indeed it hinders the creative work of the mind - if the intellect examines too closely the ideas already pouring in, as it were, at the gates. Regarded in isolation, an idea maybe quite insignificant, and venturesome in the extreme, but it may acquire importance from an idea which follows it; perhaps in certain collocation with other ideas, which may seem equally absurd, it maybe capable of furnishing a very serviceable link. The intellect cannot judge all those ideas unless it can retain them until it has considered them in connection with these other ideas. In the case of a creative mind, it seems to me, the intellect has withdrawn its watchers from the gates, and the ideas rush in pell-mell, and only then does it review and inspect the multitude. You worthy critics, or whatever you may call yourselves, are ashamed or afraid of the momentary and passing madness which is found in all real creations, the longer or shorter duration of which distinguishes the thinking artist from the dreamer. Hence your complaints of unfruitfulness, for you reject too soon and discriminate too severely."
February 15, 2020
Perceptual blocks:
- detecting what you expect: stereotyping
- Difficulty in isolating the problem
- Tendency to delimit the problem area poorly
- Saturation (mind does not record all inputs)
- Failure to utilize all sensory inputs
Emotional blocks:
- no appetite for chaos
- judging rather than generating ideas
- inability of unwilingness to incubate
- lack of challenge versus excessive zeal
Cultural and environmental blocks:
- difficulty in breaking taboos.
- fantasy and reflection are a waste of time and playfulness is for children only.
- humor in problem-solving.
- stuck on left-handed of right-handed thinking
-"everybody should be just like me"
- "Bigger is better"
- "Cyber is better"
- non-supportive physical environment.
- non-supportive human environment.
- autocratic bosses
- lack of needed resources
- inefficient choice of mental tactics or a shortage of intellectual ammunition, wrongly choosing the problem-solving language.
- inadequate language skills to express and ideas.
Kind of blockbusters:
- a questioning attitude
- working on the right problem
- time and effort foccusers and set breakers: list-making, listing of attributes, morphological analysis, check list for new ideas.
- using other people's ideas
- crossing disciplines
- crossing cultures and changing environments
- Relaxing Judgment
- incubation and sleeping on it
- detecting what you expect: stereotyping
- Difficulty in isolating the problem
- Tendency to delimit the problem area poorly
- Saturation (mind does not record all inputs)
- Failure to utilize all sensory inputs
Emotional blocks:
- no appetite for chaos
- judging rather than generating ideas
- inability of unwilingness to incubate
- lack of challenge versus excessive zeal
Cultural and environmental blocks:
- difficulty in breaking taboos.
- fantasy and reflection are a waste of time and playfulness is for children only.
- humor in problem-solving.
- stuck on left-handed of right-handed thinking
-"everybody should be just like me"
- "Bigger is better"
- "Cyber is better"
- non-supportive physical environment.
- non-supportive human environment.
- autocratic bosses
- lack of needed resources
- inefficient choice of mental tactics or a shortage of intellectual ammunition, wrongly choosing the problem-solving language.
- inadequate language skills to express and ideas.
Kind of blockbusters:
- a questioning attitude
- working on the right problem
- time and effort foccusers and set breakers: list-making, listing of attributes, morphological analysis, check list for new ideas.
- using other people's ideas
- crossing disciplines
- crossing cultures and changing environments
- Relaxing Judgment
- incubation and sleeping on it
August 17, 2011
A light look at the creative process and common blocks that interfere with it. There are occasional exercises which would be interesting with a group of people, but are of limited value to the lone reader. One of several books I bought while a psych major at the University of Washington and planned to buy and read, in alphabetical order by author, all the books in the psychology section of my neighborhood bookstore. This was my second reading of it, about 25 years later.
November 18, 2009
Best book i ever read on this theme.Very honest presentation of authors study of creative process with extremely valuable and practicals suggestion.Best part of the book is total absence of "get rich quick" stand.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 44 reviews
Can't find what you're looking for?
Get help and learn more about the design.