A Whack on the Side of the Head

Champion of the less formal style of business creativity, von Oech's approach may be a bit too zany for some European audiences, but he knows his stuff and puts it across with verve.

Don’t let the surface gloss of this book put you off its valuable and powerful content.

Von Oech’s approach is to identify the ‘locks’ that shut down creative thinking - things like assuming there is a single right answer, looking for logic, following the rules, being practical, ignoring play, sticking to your area of expertise, avoiding ambiguity, avoiding being foolish, making mistakes and denying your own creativity.

He then turns these around (with those whacks), showing how we can escape from the locks to be more creative.

The great thing about von Oech’s approach is that these barriers to creativity are often the biggest problem in getting creative processes in motion - and von Oech smashes through them mercilessly.

A Whack on the Side of the Head

Roger von Oech