Creative solutions can be challenged and defended in the pursuit of profitability. But first, creativity must be demystified. A process that targets innovation provides leaders with just such a problem-solving approach. The goal is to produce high-quality ideas that are appropriate to the task - which means groups and organizations can implement them with less risk. Work with the targeted innovation process consists of activities in five areas: stating the problem in a way that encourages creative problem solving, learning and understanding different problem-solving styles, learning and understanding creative pathways and their relationship to problem solving, generating ideas, and evaluating those ideas. Targeted innovation reconciles creativity with management. Managers can use it to solve problems that meet their organization's call for innovative answers to current challenges.

Each year from 1978 through 1987 the Center for Creative Leadership hosted an event called Creativity Week, during which a select group of researchers and practitioners would get together for a high-energy exchange of ideas on organizational creativity. Discussions explored such themes as individual innovation, creativity and teamwork, structuring the organization for innovation, and the relation of innovation to culture and technology. This book, which offers papers based on many of the best Creativity Week presentations, is thus a record of recent thinking, both practical and theoretical, on how organizational effectiveness can be improved.