Learning from Leading Innovators. (Books in Brief).

New Ideas About New Ideas: Insights on Creativity from the World's Leading Innovators by Shira P. White with G. Patton Wright. Perseus Publishing. 2002. 336 pages. Illustrated. Available from the Futurist Bookstore for $26 ($23.95 for Society members), cat. no. B-2408.

The old idea

New Ideas About New Ideas is based on interviews with more than 100 creative thinkers, including those we normally think of as creative (architects, writers, composers, choreographers, and filmmakers), as well as others such as corporate leaders and scientists whose success depends on innovative thinking.

"Innovation has become a lot more important to corporate leaders, in the last decade in particular, because of the changes in the business environment brought on by increased technological capabilities, speed, hypercompetition, and faster rates of diffusion enabled by greater connectivity," says Shira White, a painter, writer, and management consultant specializing in innovation and new product development.

This book wisely spends more time in the company of creative people, illustrating by example, rather than in offering the creative-thinking games, tricks, and exercises typically found in books on innovation.

RELATED ARTICLE: Seeing Red

You may call it "red." An artist may see crimson, scarlet, vermilion, madderlake, pink, lipstick red, fire-engine red, beet-red, blood-red, ruby, cherry, candy-apple, blush, flush, as well as varying degrees of light and dark possibilities within each.

Often, the minute you name something, you stop looking for what else it might be. You are tricked into thinking you know what something really is, and then all of your subsequent thoughts get piled on top of that narrow view. Names, words, and symbols give us speed but reduce our vision.

Excerpted from New Ideas About New Ideas by Shira P. White.