Creative Strategy Generation: Using Passion and Creativity to Compose Business Strategies That Inspire Action and Growth (BUSINESS BOOKS)

Successful strategies must have one key element to produce spectacular results for your business― originality. However, pure ingenuity can be hard to produce in the noise of derivative ideas and worn out processes drowning out fresh progress―which is why you need Creative Strategy Generation to help guide you through tried-and-true business practices in a fresh, new, and exciting way.

The author’s diverse talents as an executive leader and a musical performer, composer, and songwriter shine through in a pitch-perfect mix of mind expanding theory and practical techniques to help you unlock the artistic strategist inside you. Whether you work in a B2B or B2C company, this proven approach can boost your strategic influence and track record, as it has for the author and the many companies he has worked with. Grounded in accessible explanations, this practical guide explores the connections between the strategic and creative processes, and it demystifies the complexities of developing a strategic plan by revealing how to:

• Develop the four proficiencies of Analysis, Recollection, Intuition, and Artistry (ARIA) that are needed to creatively generate business strategies

• Clear your mind for new ideas by condensing and organizing your existing business knowledge, data, and beliefs

• Find your strategic inspiration and turn it into the vision, goals, and objectives that will ultimately drive your plan

• Deeply understand your target customers and formulate strategies that uniquely address their needs and wants

• Use storytelling to synthesize key messages, generate interest, create excitement, and establish emotional connections to get buy-in for your strategic plan

• Build a team that is fully invested, trained, and ready to play their respective parts as soon as your plan gets the green light

• Execute your strategy by fully supporting your team as a problem solver, ongoing influencer, and unflinching promoter

Put the fun and excitement back into your business planning process by using Creative Strategy Generation to compose your company’s next strategic masterpiece!

Praise for Creative Strategy Generation

"Mixing traditional marketing acumen and understanding with the creative process of songwriting, Bob encapsulates how the two worlds of business and music can provide the storytelling tools that help shape a solid business strategy. This book is incredibly informational and entertaining to see the parallels between art and the fundamentals of business."

- Bill Richards, VP Marketing, Sony Music Entertainment

"Caporale effectively invokes the mindset and language of the artist -- the canvas, melodies, and story arcs -- to create a highly practical toolkit that will be especially useful for practitioners looking to compose product and business unit-level strategy."

- Sean Gallagher, Chief Strategy Officer, Northeastern University Global Network

"Creative Strategy Generation provides a fresh new look at the topic of strategy. Using his passion for music as the starting point, Bob Caporale provides us with a step-by-step guide for infusing much-needed creativity into the strategic planning process. A must read for anyone seeking to add more value to their products or brands!"

- John Gerzema, New York Times Best-Selling Author, Social Strategist, and Leadership Consultant

"Bob Caporale composes a book on strategy that is influenced by and extends classic strategic frameworks by infusing his own passion to create an easily accessible read that will be sure to have you singing along!"

- Kevin D. Rooney, Former Chief Strategy Officer, American Access Casualty Co.

"I worked in Product Management and Strategy for most of my career, and I wish I had this book to revert back to during annual planning meetings and product launches. Bob has laid out strategy planning in a very easy to follow story book. I know I will share this methodology with my colleagues and can't wait to use it for my next strategy plan!"

- Cheryl Nash, President, Fiserv Investment Services

"Mr. Caporale presents a compelling model, blending the expressiveness of art with the objectivity of strategy. A thought-provoking approach, keeping the customer perspective in the forefront and providing a dose of reality throughout."

- Steve Thompson, VP Business Strategy, National Oilwell Varco

"As a founder of a high-growth startup with no pre-existing roadmap to follow, I appreciate the way that Bob demystifies the strategy process and gives us specific and practical tools for creating our own unique product and market strategies. Most strategy books point to high-profile success stories and try to extract common themes for us to follow. But every success story contains a complex mix of ingredients that are hard to "bottle" for others to repeat. Bob's process doesn't rely upon the past but, rather, gives business practitioners real tools for building their own paths to success."

- Aaron Gowell, Chief Conductor, SilverRail Tech

"This book is music to my ears. It's a great way for members of the C-Suite to help their teams develop their own symphonies of success! Bravo!"

- Jeffrey Hayzlett, Primetime TV & Radio Host, Keynote Speaker, and Best-Selling Author

"Bob Caporale has greatly solidified his reputation as a "master strategist!" In Creative Strategy Generation, he utilizes his musical experience, talent, and insight to artfully craft a work that will resonate with simplicity, clarity, and meaning for the thousands of practitioners who will seek and find this book for what it is -- truly a gift!"

- J. Barry Minatra, VP Business Development - North America, Larsen & Toubro Ltd.

"Bob Caporale's Creative Strategy Generation reminds us that we are, first and foremost, creative beings. This book is a practical and insightful guide on how to tap into the artistic process in order to create strategic plans that are true works of art."

- Tania Castroverde Moskalenko, President/CEO, The Center for the Performing Arts

"Caporale's latest work injects a refreshing and innovative twist to the process of developing business strategy. Through his impressively comprehensive comparison of music composition to business strategy development, Caporale makes a strong case for the necessity of moving beyond technical analysis and reaching deep for creative inspiration and improvisation to achieve the greatest business impact. For anyone who has ever picked up a musical instrument or simply enjoyed a memorable song, Caporale's analogies will indelibly link the art and science of quality musical creation to that of transformational business strategy."

- Gerry Caron, Vice President of Innovation and Product Management, OtterBox

"Bob Caporale delivers the esoteric topic of creating strategy in bite-sized chunks using every day analogies, which makes it lively and easy to understand. Overall, this book has a great beat and is easy to dance to!"

- Christine Skatchke, VP, Director - Product Strategy

"Creative Strategy Generation is a much-needed breath of fresh air. Applying the tools and constructs of music, storytelling, and other elements of artistic process shed new light on what strategy development can mean in an organization. Product managers will embrace the practicality of the tools but, moreover, realize that creativity is something we all possess and can tap into."

- Randy L. Rossi, President, Bally Design Inc.

"Bob Caporale provides an approach to strategy development that is complete, systematic, and creatively driven. Grounded in best practices, Creative Strategy Generation advances the art and science of strategy development."

- Kevin M. Taylor, VP Marketing, Fortune 25 Company

"Bob offers his personal perspective and coaching on creating a strategy, a subject that too often is focused on logic over experience and intuition. Creative Strategy Generation is easy to understand, yet covers critical topics and key frameworks that everyone, especially those new to strategy, will benefit from reading."

- Thomas Agan, Managing Partner, Rivia LLC