Book Reviews Puccio, Gerard J., Murdock, Mary C. and Mance, Marie (2007) Creative Leadership, Skills That Drive Change, Sage Publications, London. 307 pp, Paperback: ISBN-10: 1-4129-1380-2. Puccio, Murdock and Mance have written a book on creative leadership that is rooted in, and builds upon a long and impressive tra- dition in creativity, and more specifically in creative problem solving, at the International Center for Studies in Creativity at Buffalo State College. This tradition, which started with the work of Osborn, is characterized by the conviction that creativity is more than a personal trait. Creativity may be stimulated by developing the right skills, by working through an effective process, and by creating an environment that is conducive to creative thought. In this book, the authors focus on the relationship between creativity and leadership, which forms a basis for change. In the first part of the book (chapters 1–4), a lot of models and results of previous research are presented, to support the authors’ pro- position that creativity is at the core of leader- ship and that leadership effectiveness can be enhanced by creative problem-solving skills. Also in the first part, the main concepts are defined and specified. Leadership, for instance, is defined as ‘the process of positively influencing people, contexts, and outcomes through a deliberate creative approach that is applied to open-ended, novel, and ambiguous problems, both opportunities and predica- ments’. Important also is the distinction made between creativity and innovation. Creativity stands for the production of original ideas that serve some purposes, thus combining novelty and usefulness. Innovation is more than making a creative product, but includes also its successful commercialization. In chapter 2, ‘the main course on the menu’ is introduced: the so-called ‘Thinking Skills Model’, which is a graphic model depicting the process of creative problem solving. The main elements of the model are: • Three basic stages of problem solving: clari- fication (what needs to be resolved), transfor- mation (identify potential ideas and craft them into workable solutions) and imple- mentation (refine the solutions and put together a plan for taking effective action). • Each basic stage contains one ‘exploring’ and one ‘formulation’ step, in order to enhance people’s effectiveness in problem solving. This results in six formal steps of creative problem solving.  ‘Clarification’: exploring the vision and formulating challenges.  ‘Transformation’: exploring ideas and formulating solutions.  ‘Implementation’: exploring acceptance and formulating a plan. • A seventh, executive step, assessing the situ- ation, which helps people to stand above the previous six steps. This step requires meta- cognitive thought, i.e., the ability to monitor and control your own cognitive processes. • All processes require a dynamic balance between divergent thinking (a broad search for many diverse and novel alternatives) and convergent thinking (a focused and affir- mative evaluation of alternatives). The graphic representation does not contain thinking skills, and as such, the model is, in fact, the creative problem-solving model. It really becomes a thinking skill model in chapter 3, where several thinking skills are introduced: diagnostic thinking (for assessing the situation), visionary thinking (for exploring the vision), strategic thinking (for formulating challenges), ideational thinking (for exploring ideas), evaluative thinking (for formulating solutions), contextual thinking (for exploring acceptance) and tactical thinking (for formulat- ing a plan). Each of the seven thinking skills is elaborated and illustrated. Affective skills that support the main thinking skills are associated with each step. By ‘affec- tive’ the authors mean ‘the ways in which we deal with attitudinal and emotional aspects of learning, including feelings, appreciation, enthusiasm, motivations, attitudes, and values’. In the book, these affective skills are extensively argued and explained. In this review, I will only list them: curiosity, dreaming, sensing gaps, playfulness, avoiding premature closing, sensitivity to environment and tolerance for risks. 88 CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION MANAGEMENT Volume 17 Number 1 2008 doi:10.1111/j.1467-8691.2008.00468.x © 2008 The Authors Journal compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing