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Work is about creativity

Of city-based writer S. Ramachander's book "Creativity@Work"

PHOTO: K. V. SRINIVASAN

UNLEASHING CREATIVITY (from left) Chris Gibson, S. Ramachander and U. Jayaraj Rau at the launch

Creativity is about breaking patterns. The book `Creativity@ Work' explains how to do this. Going by the author's profile (S. Ramachander is a product of IIM, Ahmedabad and was former director at the Institute for Financial Management and Research and The Academy for Management Profile), it was logical to expect only tips on how to be creative at the workplace. The book springs a surprise by taking a holistic view of the concept.

Anyone might find its contents useful at the office; but it also teaches `creativity in living'. J. Krishnamurti's influence on the author shines through, especially while stressing the need to transcend the known and always look at things afresh, without the filters of conditioning. "They (poets) retain a sense of awe and a wide-eyed wonder at the beauty of things that other adults take for granted, such as a flowing river, the sunset, a flower in full bloom or a dew-drenched morning in a hill resort, full of a peculiar freshness that the city air never seems to get."

Talking about a childlike sense of wonder, he singles out the Nobel laureate physicist, Richard Feynman, "who had scribbled as a student in his book of reminiscence, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: I wonder why, I wonder why I wonder, I wonder why I wonder why I wonder."

The book is evidence of Ramchander's erudition as he discusses various ideas propounded by thinkers around the world.

On the equations between the part and the whole, he says, "For Goethe, as Peter Senge and others point out in "Presence", the whole was something dynamic and living that continually came into being in concrete manifestations. In turn, a part was the manifestation of the whole rather than just a component of it. Neither exists without the other. The whole exists through continually manifesting itself in the parts, and the parts exist as manifestations of the whole."

Some sections of the book (such as the one about `thinking in pictures') could be adopted as a toolkit that could unleash creativity, if you choose to ignore Ramchander's warning. "Being creative is not, and can never be, according to a formula. If it were, it would be a template, a design well-known to many and therefore circumscribed by tradition. It can never, by definition, have the liberating quality demanded by the `new'. So if you have stayed with me so far, you may agree that a book on creative managing cannot be a toolbox."

At a recent British Council event that launched the book, Ramchander said that `Creativity@Work' is an invitation to be a non-conformist and create one's own rules in seeing, thinking and doing.

Releasing the book, U. Jayaraj Rau, vice-president and general manager, JWT said there were any number of cases that validated the ideas contained in the book.

Receiving the first copy, Chris Gibson, director, British Council — South India, said it was not a book one read from cover to cover.

True, because the book has a lot of substance and the reader might have to go back to chapters to assimilate the challenging viewpoints they present.

PRINCE FREDERICK

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