Book Review: IMAAI Magazine

There are readers who will demur at the frequent near cheerleading running through much of Nir Bashan’s book The Creator Mindset: 92 Tools to Unlock the Secrets to Innovation, Growth, and Sustainability. 

There is a reason for it though.

Bashan wants to jar business leaders out of their lethargy, force them out of their comfort zone, and open new vistas of approaching their business practices. It behooves him to provide ample encouragement. The two hundred plus pages of his book are not rife with such moments, he just as often prefers to present his ideas in a reasoned fashion, but the book would lack some of its obvious spark if he adhered to a dry and academic examination of how professionals and business owners can unlock their workplace creativity.

NIR BASHAN: www.nirbashan.com/about

His writing displays natural and understated gifts as a storyteller. Bashan uses several examples throughout The Creator Mindset to reinforce his ideas and concepts and one example is how Steve Jobs made imaginative moves to resuscitate Apple from the brink of corporate death, illustrate his storytelling talents. He doesn’t overwhelm readers with the backroom minutia of the “war” between Apple and Microsoft, only touching on it briefly to give readers needed context, but yet relates this episode in American business history with lean economy that puts readers in the middle of a pivotal event.

The book’s structure is another key ingredient in its success. Bashan marshals his material in an orderly way and his unerring instinct for how to bring the book together makes The Creator Mindset an easy read. Easy does not mean shallow. Bashan’s intelligence and insight shines through on each page, but he smartly lays out the book and writes in such a way that it will be accessible to anyone interested in hearing what he has to say. He builds the book in such a way that readers can likely dip into it at selected points and glean a considerable amount of information, but first time readers are best served by tackling the book from beginning to end before they start cherry picking what is relevant to their situation and what isn’t.

PURCHASE LINK: www.amazon.com/Creator-Mindset-Secrets-Innovation-Sustainability-ebook/dp/B07ZG1M5KK

He does include some illustrations in the book, but they are scant. Bashan, instead, is capable enough as a writer that he can rely on his prose to convey his ideas to the reader but, having said that, the illustrations he does embed in the text are useful rather than ornamental. The Creator Mindset: 92 Tools to Unlock the Secrets to Innovation, Growth, and Sustainability should prove to be an enormously helpful book for business leaders and it is difficult to imagine anyone exhausting the resources and tools he suggests in short order. Many books on this subject are written in such a way they are destined to date soon after publication, but Bashan avoids those pitfalls and instead serves up a text for readers with limitless utility. Nir Bashan’s reputation will be further burnished by this work and many readers will be grateful he took the time to set his ideas down in book form.

Clay Burton

Nir BashanComment