Creativity has long been thought to be an individual gift, best pursued alone; schools, organizations, and whole industries are built on this idea. But what if the most common beliefs about how creativity works are wrong? Group Genius tears down some of the most popular myths about creativity, revealing that creativity is always collaborative--even when you're alone. Sharing the results of his own acclaimed research on jazz groups, theater ensembles,...

"This powerful book introduces core critical thinking concepts and principles as an empowering problem-solving framework for every profession, course of study, and indeed every area of life. The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools distills the groundbreaking work of Richard Paul and Linda Elder, targeting how to deconstruct thinking through the elements of reasoning and how to assess the quality of our thinking. The eighth edition...

This helpful resource is designed to offer teachers, facilitators, and parents a wide variety of activities designed to cultivate children's problem-solving skills while fostering cooperation between group members. These hands-on projects teach children to experiment with building methods, discover new uses for everyday items, try on new personas, and express themselves as they work toward a solution as a team. Team members are required to think outside...

"Twelve-year-old orphan Max Einstein is not your typical genius. Max hacks the computer system at NYU in order to attend college courses, builds inventions to help the homeless, and plays speed chess in the park. Her life is crazy but predictable until Max is recruited by a mysterious organization! Their mission: solve some of the world's problems using science. She's helped by a diverse group of young geniuses from around the globe as they invent...

What do you do with a problem? Especially one that follows you around and doesn't seem to be going away? Do you worry about it? Ignore it? Do you run and hide from it? This is the story of a persistent problem and the child who isn't so sure what to make of it. The longer the problem is avoided, the bigger it seems to get. But when the child finally musters up the courage to face it, the problem turns out to be something quite different than it appeared....

A quirky and utterly logical seventh-grade girl named Emma-Jean Lazarus discovers some interesting results when she gets involved in the messy everyday problems of her peers.

Your guide to making better decisions Despite the dizzying amount of data at our disposal today-and an increasing reliance on analytics to make the majority of our decisions-many of our most critical choices still come down to human judgment. This fact is fundamental to organizations whose leaders must often make crucial decisions: to do this they need the best available insights. In Judgment Calls, authors Tom Davenport and Brook Manville share...

"So often in life, we get stuck in a cycle of response. We put out fires. We deal with emergencies. We stay downstream, handling one problem after another, but we never make our way upstream to fix the systems that caused the problems ... [This book] probes the psychological forces that push us downstream--including 'problem blindness,' which can leave us oblivious to serious problems in our midst. And Heath introduces us to the thinkers who have...

Outlines a breakthrough approach to conflict resolution and creative problem solving that draws on the techniques of thinkers from a broad range of disciplines to explain how to incorporate diverse viewpoints for win-win solutions.

Principal Wagner confidently deals with a faculty washroom crisis, a psychic parrot, and a terrorizing gerbil, but when sixty-five erasers go missing, he enlists the help of the school's best problem solver and locator of lost items, twelve-year-old Lyle Williams, aka Mudshark.