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Thinkertoys (Second Edition) by Michael Michalko

There are lots of good books on different aspects of creativity out in the world, but there really aren't many that you can regard as a book to buy if you really want to change the way you think to become generally more creative. We'd modestly say that one of these is our own Imagination Engineering, and another is Michael Michalko's Thinkertoys.

This is the second edition of Michalko's book - the first has been around since 1991 - but don't think that this makes Thinkertoys lack any freshness. One of the great things about a good creativity book is that it gets better with age, rather that dating. Creativity doesn't change - and neither do the effectiveness of good techniques. In fact in this case, coming back to the book after 10 years since I first read it, I'd say it has got better. It's partly because this an expanded and revised version, but also because it's more obvious that Thinkertoys really stands out from the crowd.

Practically from page one, this book leads you into the fundamental challenge of creativity - tackling the assumptions we make all the time, and that's an experience you will find repeated time and time again. This might seem a bit repetitive (and this was my original complaint about the book) but there are two important lessons. Firstly that it takes a lot of practice to become aware of making those assumptions - the reader gets caught out time and again - and there are all sorts of different ways we make assumptions and fail to find new ways of looking at a problem.

This is a really polished book. The pages neatly mix exercises, information, techniques and more with effortless ease. Sometimes there's so much on the page it can hit the eye rather hard, forcing the reader to slow down and pull it apart - but that's not a bad thing. Creativity is often a matter of slowing down your thinking.

It's interesting to put Thinkertoys alongside our Imagination Engineering, because each is better in a different way. If you want a framework - an approach to use to systematically come up with new ideas and solve problems, Imagination Engineering has the edge. But when it comes to a book designed to improve your personal creative ability, to make you as an individual more reflexively creative, Thinkertoys is peerless. It's simply the best.

This is a big book (over 380 large format pages), and isn't one I'd recommend reading from cover to cover in one go. It's more appropriate to treat it as a mini-course. Taken a chapter a day it works excellently.

For those who like their techniques packaged in card form to get an instant zap, there's the accompanying ThinkPak card pack. This can be used independently or as an add-on to the book. Accompanying card pack (Thinkpack):

Paperback.