The Myths of Creativity Exposed, The Truths of Creativity Explained

How to Steal Fire

Creativity is a topic of real interest for businesses as well as individuals. How to Steal Fire aims to expose the myths in current thinking about this big subject and the explain the underlying truths, offering new insights into a subject that matters to us all.

Very interesting... Talks a lot about the origins of creativity.

Chief executives have talked for decades about the importance of innovation, which academics define as the implementation of new ideas. But far less attention has been devoted to figuring out how to foster creativity itself. 
[How to Steal Fire is] a book on one of the most eagerly sought qualities in the business world: creativity. It promises to show readers how to think boldly and spark imaginative thought.

Stephen Bayley (Author) 
 In the 1970s, Terence Conran plucked Stephen from the obscurity of provincial academe to do his good works. One result was The Boilerhouse Project, promoting design in London's V&amp;A, which became the most successful gallery of the eighties. Another result was the influential Design Museum. Stephen has since become one of the world's best-known commentators on design and popular culture. 
 
Roger Mavity (Author) 
 Roger first learnt about creativity as a director of the admired French Gold Abbott advertising agency, before founding his own ad agency, Mavity Gilmore Jaume, whose clients included Honda cars, Trans World Airways and Burberry. He was then CEO of Sir Terence Conran’s group of design-led businesses for several years, before starting a new career as a writer and photographer. His books include the global bestseller Life’s a Pitch, also co-authored with Stephen Bayley, and his photography has been exhibited in London, Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam.

________ 
 
‘Promises to show readers how to think boldly and spark imaginative thought’ (FT) 
________ 
 
Creativity is a powerful force. It drives innovation, boosts our economy and enables us to fulfil our human potential. But what actually is creativity? Is it overrated? And where exactly do ideas come from in the first place? 
 
In this book, design gurus Stephen Bayley and Roger Mavity debunk the myths and common misconceptions that form our current thinking around this complex subject. In showing readers how to think boldly and remain undaunted by challenges, they examine the phenomenon from all sides: not only the creativity of invention and of imagination but also that of perception and of discovery, in order to reveal the truths we often overlook. 
 
Ultimately, How to Steal Fire will help you reclaim yourself from the anonymous dreariness of a data-driven culture and spark imaginative thought.

How to Sell Yourself and Your Brilliant Ideas

Life's a Pitch

How to sell yourself and your brilliant ideas - the classic business book updated

If only I had read this book at the beginning of my career, where would I be now?

This book isn't just about business. It's also about life. That's why you should read it.

One of the most honest books I’ve read in a long, long time. Maybe forever.

Crammed with ideas and rich in the kind of quotations that have a way of giving you a jolt up the spine and lodging themselves in your brain.

Stephen Bayley (Author) 
 In the 1970s, Terence Conran plucked Stephen from the obscurity of provincial academe to do his good works. One result was The Boilerhouse Project, promoting design in London's V&amp;A, which became the most successful gallery of the eighties. Another result was the influential Design Museum. Stephen has since become one of the world's best-known commentators on design and popular culture. 
 
Roger Mavity (Author) 
 Roger had been hired by Terence many times, and fired nearly as often. First at the French Gold Abbott ad agency where Roger won the Habitat advertising account; then at two more agencies including Mavity Gilmore, his own business. In 2006 he became Chief Executive of Conran Holdings, Terence’s business empire, where he stayed for seven years. Roger also ran his own ad agency for ten years and was Chief Executive of Granada Group’s technology and leisure divisions for another ten years. He quit business to work as a writer and photographer.

The pitch is the absolute essence of modern business. 
 
Ideas are the most valuable commodity in the modern economy and it is human skill which develops them. 
 
However the skills of the pitch are not only relevant to the world of business, rather they apply to just about every significant personal transaction in your life... 
 
So whether at a sales conference in corporate conference room hell or over lunch at a glamorous restaurant, Life's a Pitch tells you how to handle human transactions. A pitch is not a meeting, it's a drama. A pitch is not about transferring information, it's about transferring power. It is business, but it is also theatre. 
 
Part inspirational manual for business, part guidebook to a successful and happy social life, Life's a Pitch is written as the result of an accumulated half century of (mostly successful) pitching by the authors. Ground-breaking and genre-busting, it will transform the way you think about the art of persuasion for ever.

Stephen Bayley

Brilliantly drawn ..the pages are full of Wildean paradoxes

A satirical novel

With all the wit, knowledge and wisdom of one of the UK's foremost cultural commentators, Stephen Bayley takes the reader on a satirical roller-coaster ride through the world of art and design in the late 20th century. 
 
'Brilliantly drawn ..the pages are full of Wildean paradoxes' The Spectator 
______________________________ 
 
Someone once said you can find beauty anywhere. But all Eustace Dunne can see is ugliness. 
The buildings are grey, the people are tired and unimaginative, the food is inedible and life is drab, drab, drab. 
 
Growing up in an England ravaged by the Second World War, Eustace resolves to make things beautiful again. A mercurial stint in art school gives him a springboard into a world that is changing so fast you have to hold on tight to keep up. And in that world, ambition, timing and a modicum of talent can transform you into anything you want to be. 
 
Before long he's an artist, a designer, a restaurateur, an entrepreneur, a genius. But becoming a bastion of perfect taste can be a grubby business. Eustace's charm may have secured his influence on the homes and hearts of a nation, but there are still people out there who know where the bodies are buried...

Stephen Bayley

Praise for The Art of Living

Brilliantly drawn ..the pages are full of Wildean paradoxes

Books by Stephen Bayley

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