This reviewer is ashamed to admit that I have been training in creativity for ten years, but this is the first time I have read this book. That was a big mistake - because it's fair to say that Applied Imagination is the single most important book in the whole catalogue of creativity.

I was well aware that Osborn had come up with the concept of brainstorming, and a good number of the idea generation techniques used by everyone from de Bono to Creativity Unleashed (some with more acknowledgement for Osborn's input than others) - but I was amazed just how much of the material we have devised independently over the years - on such matters as environment and personal development, for instance - is all there in this seminal 1953 classic.

Osborn was an advertising man - co-founder of the great New York BBDO agency - and as such has tended to be ignored by the more academic/psychologically based writers. They do so at their peril.

Applied Imagination is a big book - around 400 pages - and though it's not a light read, in part through its age, it isn't academically tedious either. If you are doing anything in the sphere of creativity and you don't have a copy of this book on the shelf you MUST get one, alongside a framework oriented book like our Imagination Engineering and a innovation management book like our Creativity and Innovation for Managers.

Showing as 5-7 week availability from Amazon.com, but a copy we ordered was dispatched in less than a week. It isn't directly available in the UK/Europe, but we have now got a number of new copies which are available via Marketplace - just click the Amazon.co.uk button.