The Five Faces of Genius
Creativity and business have long enjoyed an uneasy alliance, with the latter more dependent on the former than it usually cares to admit. InThe Five Faces of Genius, however, Annette Moser-Wellman builds a compelling case for creativity as the true force behind business and lays out ways in which it can be harnessed to even greater advantage. Moser-Wellman, president of a consulting firm that advocates just such an approach, breaks down the "thinking skills" of inventive masters like Mozart and Da Vinci into five types--Seer, Observer, Alchemist, Fool, and Sage--and then explains how readers can use the same processes in their own careers. "I discovered that the creative mind is the same no matter where you find it," she writes. "It took the same skills for Robert Frost to write a poem or for Bob Dylan to write a ballad as it did for Howard Schultz to create the idea for the Starbucks empire."Following an exercise that helps readers determine their own creative strengths and weaknesses, Moser-Wellman goes into detail on each of her five traits and offers concrete suggestions for integrating them into the corporate environment. As epitomized by Ray Kroc of McDonald's, for example, Seers can learn to "create a plethora of possible business solutions and to predict the uncharted territory of their industry and company." By combining real-world examples and implementation ideas with her own incisive perspective, Moser-Wellman provides advice that should appeal to anyone who believes there is more to a job than uninspired, rote behavior. --Howard Rothman