Advanced Praise for Creative People Must be Stopped!

“Creative People Must Be Stopped is among the best books ever written about human imagination in the workplace. David Owens is a master innovator, having practiced his craft as a product designer, researcher, teacher, creativity coach, and executive.  The breadth and depth of his experience fills every page of this little gem, which is chock full of hundreds of big and little steps that you can take right now to do more creative work and to lead more innovative teams and organizations.”

Robert Sutton, Stanford Professor
Author of the New York Times bestseller Good Boss, Bad Boss

“Dave writes as he teaches, with humor, candor, and surprisingly sophisticated theoretical underpinning.  The result is an engaging and very accessible book filled with practical tools for leaders interested in advancing their innovation agendas.”

Lisa C. King, VP Insights and Innovation
Newell Rubbermaid

“Innovation is about asking the right questions! Dave Owens describes a fresh way to ask and answer the questions that really make a difference in successful innovation.”

Chad Holliday, Retired Chairman and
CEO DuPont, Chairman Bank of America

“Creative People Must Be Stopped explores and characterizes the causes of why so many great ideas never make it to market, and why some do!  It is rich in real-world examples and provides straightforward tools to unleash your innovation potential.  It is essential reading for anyone that thinks that they might have something to do with innovation, and especially for those who don’t.”

Neil A. Willcocks
VP R&D, Mars Petcare

“This is essential and timely reading for leaders in the field of arts and culture. Owens understands – and more importantly is able to clearly convey – the barriers to innovation within organizations and how to overcome them.  His insights about how to make good ideas actually result in positive change are invaluable to any leader seeking to strengthen an organization, and offer a fresh and clarifying approach to the whole concept of innovation.”

Russell Willis Taylor, President and CEO
National Arts Strategies

“This is no rarefied academic treatment on innovation as an abstract ideal, but a nuts and bolts handbook to dissecting our thought patterns about innovation. Owens dispels the myth that innovation is a binary trait that either exists or does not in a given product, process or business model.  “Creative People Must be Stopped” addresses the myriad ways that novel ideas can fail in the marketplace.  Working through a combination of thought experiments and real world examples, the book demonstrates how failures in understanding the context for innovation can prove every bit as deadly to progress as failures of imagination.”

Mark Rowan, President
Griffin Technology Inc.

“Dave Owens has delivered the survival guide every would-be innovation team requires before entering the fracas battle of bringing ideas to life. Read “6 Ways We Kill Innovation” if you are serious about making stuff and making stuff happen in this dangerous world for good ideas and the creative people who love them.”

Peter Durand, Alphachimp Studio
Leading expert in graphic facilitation and grizzled veteran of watching
ideas struggle, suffer and die during the “innovation process

“Ever wonder why your company can’t seem to succeed at breakthrough innovation?  Or why your team’s big idea never goes anywhere?  Or why you aren’t able to generate more creative solutions to problems?  David Owens’ book Creative People Must Be Stopped will help you answer these questions.  Better still, Owens will help you diagnose what’s behind these underperformances, and what you can do to get unstuck.  Combining solid insights and theory about innovation with practical approaches and compelling stories, Owens brings clarity to a topic that is often misunderstood.”

Todd McCullough, Innovation Practice Partner
Monitor Group, Managing Director, Doblin Inc.

“Dave Owens is brilliant, really remarkable… It was renewing and inspiring for my staff and board to go through the experience for themselves… The case studies included corporate environments, and the way the discussion was structured made these cases relevant and incredibly applicable. The curriculum respected our industry.”

Laura Penn, Former Managing Director, INTIMAN
Executive Director, The Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers