Whack!

This weekend I read the book A Whack on the Side of the Head by Roger von Oech. I really enjoyed it. He lays out the ten blocks of creative thinking, many of which were right on. What I think was missing from this book and the many creativity books I’ve been reading is application. If the creativity books could be written for specific fields, then there could be application exercises to remove blocks. You can read the books all day and love the ideas, but how do you put them in to action? When? So much of the value of a workshop is just taking the time to actually focus on a particular topic for an extended period of time. I would love to be a fly on the wall in some of von Oech’s workshops to see how he applies his theories to different companies.

About Shana Merlin

Merlin Works is the brainchild of Shana Merlin: improviser, teacher, and performer. Since 1996, she’s been leading classes that stretch people’s imaginations, push them out of their comfort zones, and make them laugh out loud for hours at a time.
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