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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.
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