Managing Creative People: Lessons in Leadership for the Ideas Economy | 
| Author: Gordon Torr
Publisher: Wiley
Category: Book
List Price: $39.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 421600
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 318
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.1
ISBN: 0470726458
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.314
EAN: 9780470726457
Publication Date: June 3, 2008
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Product Description
A clash between the ideology of growth and the growth of ideas, between control and creativity, between measurement and the immeasurable, between predictability and the fickle muses of inspiration in engulfing our boardrooms. In this scathing swipe at the institutionalised idiocy that is stifling creativity just at the time the world needs it most Gordon Torr draws from the leading lights of creativity research to demolish the myths that surround the generation of ideas in the modern organisation. The curse of the brainstorm, the commoditisation of creative talent, the deskilling of the imagination, the startling inadequacies of management theory – these and the many other horrors of idea-assassination that run rampant in creative sector companies are dissected and disembowelled in this hilarious expose of the drama that unfolds every time a new idea slides across the boardroom table. This book sets out to address the black hole that surrounds the management of creative people, debunking many myths of creativity, and outlining a revolutionary approach to the pressing issue of creative productivity in the contemporary creative sector company. A handbook of tools, techniques, methods and practical ideas whose USP is a framework for thinking about efficient creative management – how to extract value from creative time. Gordon Torr presents a logical argument that puts in place the building blocks of the author’s knowledge and experience towards the final architecture. “We need them as never before. And we know that they’re somehow different. Yet the productive management of creative people is an almost totally neglected science. I doubt if there’s a single industry that wouldn’t gain immediate advantage from Gordon Torr’s scrupulous and enlightening detective work.”
- Jeremy Bullmore
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| Customer Reviews:
 The Most Spot On Exploration On Creativity I've Ever Read... October 30, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
For anyone who has anything to do with a creative business, this book provides the most far-reaching exploration of how and why ideas flourish with some people and environments, while withering helplessly in others.
This is one of those rare books that screams "MY LIFE'S WORK." It is painstakingly researched and personally-informed through interviews with and explorations of various heavyweight thoughtleaders in the field. The range of Mr. Torr's intellectual curiosity on this topic spans continents and millennia, and the result is a singularly insightful primer on this oft-discussed topic.
In fact, my only complaint with the book is its density: reading this is truly akin to attempting to sip from a firehose. Amidst the glut of pseudo-business help books that stretch a thin premise to the breaking point over the course of ten anemic chapters, Gordon Torr hammers an encyclopedia's worth of thought and ideas into 288 remarkable pages. Quite candidly, he could have easily parsed this out into three separate volumes and I wouldn't have felt cheated.
If you care about this topic, you simply must read this singular book. There is none better.
A welcome book on organizational creativity August 10, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
On the shoulders of brilliant thinkers before him, and often running counter to their positions, Gordon Torr, in his book "Managing Creative People", has brought forward, in his own refreshing, thought provoking and humorous writing style, some compelling new ideas about the nature of human creativity and how to make it work in organizational structures such as businesses, government agencies and non-profit groups.
It's hard to do justice to this book in a review... but after reading it I can say with conviction that if you work with or manage creative people, or you want to work with or manage creative people, then you should read it, perhaps several times. Get ready for some ideas that will run counter to everything you've learned so far. As Dorothy said in the Wizard of Oz, "Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore."
Having worked in the design and advertising industry as a creative for most of my adult life, I have to say that I concur with Gordon's thesis that creativity and creative output has suffered greatly for the last 100 years or more. One only has to look at the current creative output in almost any discipline, with few exceptions, to see how low the bar has been set. As Gordon points out in his book, the machine of the industrial revolution has ground up many of our creative workers into sausages and unless there is wide spread corporate, societal and governmental change I fear we will continue down this path for many years to come.
Interestingly, I've noticed similar or parallel arguments cropping up in other books and articles. Seth Godin's Meatball Sundae, for instance, speaks of how many companies lack big ideas and innovation in their DNA because of their fear of changing the status quo. Other studies point out that companies using rigorous quality and performance standards such as Six Sigma and ISO 9000 can in some cases hamper the output of creative individuals hired to perform their magic (3M, for instance, after implementing Six Sigma principles, is returning to their famous "3M Way" and policy of allowing workers to spend 15% of their time on independent projects).
Some adjectives, phrases and words to that come to mind when reviewing this book: refreshing, thorough, exhaustive, humorous, enlightening, brilliant, scrupulous, disturbing, compelling, thought provoking, topical, counter to popular opinion, a call to action, just in time (hopefully).
 Misleading Title August 7, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This isn't really a "how to" book on managing creatives. In fact, there's very little about management at all (which the author acknowledges fairly early on in the book).
This book is more of a manifesto about what the author thinks about creativity, and where most companies get it wrong.
One of his central attacks is on the concept of creativity as a problem solving process. He argues that true innovation doesn't come out of a corporate problem solving process.
This is one of the many ideas that makes the book useless to managers. The fact of the matter is that most companies are not interested in creating art for it's own sake. They want creative thought applied to business problems in order to come up with a solution. The author dismisses that kind of process as not being "creativity". Which may be right, but it means there's little point in reading this book if you're a manager in the corporate world.
The authour's main tack seems to be that you should hire creative people and leave them alone to be creative without involving them in the problems of the business. If you're leaving them alone then you don't really need to manage them do you? So why read the book?
I give the book two stars because it is a well thought out, really interesting argument. But be aware that the book is the authour's (very theoretical) manifesto, and not really of much practical use unless you're in a position to make drastic and major changes to your organisation.
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