Teach: Creativity Tools

The tools on this page can be adapted to teach creativity, imagination, ingenuity, originality, and resourcefulness.
• Request tools created by the Project on Positive Leadership
• Tell our community about how you use these tools and ask other users for advice on our LinkedIn groups page
• If you have tools you like to use and are willing to share them with us, let us know

Triteness, Creativity, and Absurdity Stories

Free tool available upon request from the Project on Positive Leadership.

  • Author: Ryan Quinn
  • Date: 2020
  • Series: Virtues and Vices
  • Pages: 6
  • Summary: This is one of the tools that makes up the Project on Positive Leadership’s “Virtues and Vices” series of instructional tools. It contains four stories of creativity, triteness, or absurdity. A tool with multiple stories enables students to examine what is required to exhibit ideal creativity across different settings, and to account for the differing perspectives of multiple stakeholders. Each story includes carefully-crafted reflection questions to provoke the students’ learning, to prepare them for class, to prepare themselves to practice creativity, and to motivate them to be more mindful about their approach to leadership.

d.school Starter Kit

  • Videos, Slides, Lesson Plan
    • Price: Free
    • By Seamus Yu Harte
    • Stanford Design School
  • Summary: This is a great tool for getting people started on design thinking. It treats creativity as a process, with many skills embedded in the process. To help students tie this to leadership, it is useful to stop at various points and help them see where leadership is embedded in the process, or where the process could be used to lead.

The 5 Chair Challenge

  • Activity
    • Price: Free
    • Stanford Design School
  • Summary: This is one of many tools available for giving people a visceral experience of walking through the design process. This one is put together well for others to use. It is not directly tied to leadership, so students will benefit from an instructor helping them make the connections.

The Craft of Creativity

  • Book
    • Price: $16.50 – $80.79
    • By Matthew A. Cronin and Jeffrey Loewenstein
    • Stanford Business Books
    • Published 2018
  • Summary: The whole book is good. If you simply want your students to understand why creativity is a craft and to be introduced to the model, you can have them focus on chapter two. Other chapters contain specific tools for changing the way you think, making ideas material, and so forth.