Aha!

However paradoxical it may sound, creativity can be taught--at least, that's the premise of Jordan Ayan's Aha! 10 Ways to Free Your Creative Spirit and Find Your Great Ideas (Crown Trade Paperbacks, $15 paper).

Skeptical? Don't be. Ayan, a creativity expert who has counseled companies as well-known as Sprint and Kimberly-Clark, is clearly well-versed in the art of getting people to think outside the proverbial box. As he points out, we start out as kindergarteners who are given bulging packs of crayons to express ourselves--and we graduate into adults who boast nothing more colorful than ballpoint pens. The trick, it seems, is to get back a little of the creative ammunition we've lost along the way.

To do that, Ayan outlines a four-stage creative process. From preparation to incubation to illumination to implementation/verification, the process is one Ayan contends can be called upon to stimulate those creative juices.

Refreshingly easy to read, Aha! is jampacked with suggestions to get you over whatever mental hurdles you may have.

This article was originally published in the February 1997 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: Aha!.