LEAD 501
Creative Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making
Embedded Files
Taught by John Spero—perhaps my favorite and certainly one of the most challenging professors in the program—LEAD 501 had some of the most immediate and lasting effects on my life beyond the classroom. Learning the Creative Problem Solving process and engaging with formative texts like de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats and Catmull’s Creativity, Inc. reshaped how I approach collaboration and innovation. Though the in-class facilitations were initially intimidating, I came to appreciate the synthesis stage most—seeing how diverse ideas could quickly evolve into creative, actionable solutions.
Creativity and Beyond!
Creativity and Beyond!
This paper explores the book Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull with Amy Wallace. The text is a collection of insights into how an organization can foster and maintain a culture of creativity, based on lessons learned during the production of films at Pixar Animation Studios. Catmull’s book, part-memoir and part-manual, is divided into three parts — an overview of key milestones in Pixar’s history, foundations and barriers to creativity, and building a creative culture. The paper examines the text’s main ideas and reflects on the book’s connection to the main ideas from Daemen University’s LEAD 501 course on creative thinking, problem solving, and decision making.
Task Summary Assignment
Task Summary Assignment
Professor Spero’s task summary exercise was a creative way to help us recognize where individuals might fall within the Creative Problem Solving process. In a clever twist on a case study, each of us was assigned a song to analyze and diagram—mine was How Deep Is Your Love by the Bee Gees. What began as a playful exploration of lyrics became an insightful exercise in building personas from limited data, a skill that would prove invaluable later in LEAD 555.
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