Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques (2nd Edition)

Feeling like your creativity just isn't poppin'? This book has tools and exercises to get you dancing again. Very unique style of book, and very helpful. Get it.

For anybody who needs to express themselves...brilliant book filled with techniques to get those proverbial juices flowing...

Great techniques for getting the most out of the gray matter in my skull.

A good tool for non conventional thinking

This is one I pick up every now and then. I haven't finished it but there was one exercise that I used to come up with the name of my company www.LocalExposure.com - so it's def worth the time to read it and learn some creative ideas.

A good book that contains many useful techniques for unleashing your creativity (individually and in a group). A lot of visual techniques are included, e.g. mindmapping and storyboards. I would certainly recommend it to anyone who wants to generate fresh new ideas about developing one's business (the author's main stress is on the business applications, but I think these techniques can be applied...more

A good book that contains many useful techniques for unleashing your creativity (individually and in a group). A lot of visual techniques are included, e.g. mindmapping and storyboards. I would certainly recommend it to anyone who wants to generate fresh new ideas about developing one's business (the author's main stress is on the business applications, but I think these techniques can be applied anywhere).However, the impression is somewhat spoiled by several things.The author seems to be really, really devoted to the "rabbit-which-is-also-a-duck" picture and shows it three times. The first time he says you can see either a rabbit or a duck, not both at once. The second time he says it is a rabbit and a duck at the same time and it is a paradox. The third time the duck becomes a penguin and the rabbit is not very convincing, if it is there at all. In my opinion, that's clearly overdoing it. The book is 2nd edition, the first one was printed almost 20 years ago. I think that for the new edition the author at least had to go over the examples and update them or remove the obsolete ones. For example, he describes in details an invention of machines that would be located in university campuses and dispense software for money, placing it on "disks" (the quotation marks belong to Michalko). He also says that "The machines would be compatible with both IBM and Apple." Quick, someone tell Michalko that machines dispensing software have been invented a long time ago and they are called "computers connected to the Internet"! Also, it's been a while since PCs were called IBM computers. Et cetera, et cetera.There are some meaningless statements that also mar the overall impression of the book, for example: "No program can generate a number more complex than itself." Hello?All in all, I'd say the book is pretty good, even though the author has problems with computers and math.   hide

This is a wonderful book !

Just Started

Good book... to bad the class was canceled by the prof. Oh well