In the book "CREATIVE STRATEGY GENERATION: Using Passion and Creativity to Compose Business Strategies That Inspire Action and Growth" by author Bob Caporale details a pitch-perfect mix of mind-expanding theory and practical techniques to help unlock the artistic strategist inside all of us.
Caporale says, "I'm just trying to help strategic practitioners put well-tested theories to better use. In the end, it's not about reinventing the wheel. It's about inspiring people to update the wheel, use it in a new kind of vehicle, and drive it to places that have never been visited before."
A creative process enables you to work outside the lines. There are some basic rules that you need to apply and some basic steps that you need to follow. These steps, however, tend to serve more as layers, with each one building fluidly upon the next, but without rigidly defining exactly how you move from one step to the other or what exactly the result of each step needs to be. In this way, a creative process teaches you how to build rather than what to build.
Through this process, you will be using the four proficiencies of Analysis, Recollection, Intuition, and Artistry to create the inputs and outputs by following seven distinct steps:
1. Preparation
2. Inspiration
3. Genre
4. Ideation
5. Arrangement
6. Orchestration
7. Production
Much of your creative energy will be spent on the outputs--looking toward the future and deciding how you are going to affect that future. That said, before you can determine where you're going, you need to understand where you are and where you've been. These are critical inputs that will be required to help define your strategy. And these are the inputs that will begin our journey.