Michael Michalko
Think Jar Collective is honored to have Creativity expert Michael Michalko contributing his insights and experience.
Michael is a highly-acclaimed creativity expert and author of the best-seller Thinkertoys (A Handbook of Business Creativity), ThinkPak (A Brainstorming Card Deck), Cracking Creativity (The Secrets of Creative Genius), and Creative Thinkering: Putting Your Imagination to Work.
As an officer in the U.S. Army, he organized a team of NATO intelligence specialists and international academics in Frankfurt, Germany to research, collect, and categorize all known inventive-thinking methods. His team applied these methods to various NATO military, political, and social problems and produced a variety of breakthrough ideas and creative solutions to new and old problems. His duties included facilitating CIA think tanks using his creative-thinking techniques.
After leaving government service, Michael later applied these creative-thinking techniques to problems in the corporate world with outstanding successes. Michael now provides keynote speeches, workshops, and seminars on fostering creative thinking for clients who range from Fortune 500 corporations to associations and governmental agencies. In addition to his work in the U.S., Michael speaks and provides workshops in countries around the world.
Some of Michael's creative-thinking techniques that were refined by his government and corporate practice were published in his best-seller Thinkertoys (A Handbook of Business Creativity), which the Wall Street Journal reported "will change the way you think." He is also the author of Cracking Creativity (The Secrets of Creative Geniuses) which describes the common thinking strategies creative geniuses have used in the sciences, art, and industry throughout history and shows how we can apply them to become more creative in our business and personal lives. In addition, he created Thinkpak (A Brainstorming Card Set), which is a novel creative-thinking tool that is designed to facilitate brainstorming sessions. Michael’s most recent book Creative Thinkering: Putting Your Imagination to Work focuses on how creative geniuses combine and conceptually blend dissimilar subjects create original thoughts and ideas.
Micheal's Web site: www.creativethinking.net
Articles by Michael
Tools by Michael
Renowned Creativity expert Michael Michalko shares an interesting story about the invention of velcro and offers a couple tests for pattern recognition and lateral thinking when problem solving.