Rutland author Dennis Sherwood wins at The Business Book Awards
An author’s guide to creative thinking has won a UK business award.
Dennis Sherwood from Exton wrote Creativity for Scientists and Engineers: A practical guide to help people view challenges in the workplace, and in life, differently.
The guide - which uses examples and stories from people who have invented solutions to sticky problems in their various fields - was praised by judges at The Business Book Awards for being accessible to those who don’t have a science or engineering background.
Already the author of several books on strategic and creative thinking, Dennis is a management consultant with an interest in complex mathematical problems.
He attended The Business Book Awards ceremony at The Drum events centre in Wembley, London on Tuesday (May 16) at which he was presented with his winner’s trophy.
“In the business world this is quite a big deal,” said Dennis, who now runs the Silver Bullet Machine Manufacturing Company, specialising in organisational creativity and innovation.
“There were about 300 people at the awards ceremony, including authors, publicity agents and judges.”
Dennis describes his book as a ‘how to’ guide.
“If you need an idea you don’t stare into space to come up with it,” he said.
“You follow three stages, outlined in the book, starting with being observant and curious.”
According to Dennis, who has also written about the failings of examination systems in UK education, children have the ability to be observant and curious in their thinking, asking questions such as ‘why is the sky blue?’ but they are taught to think in more conformist ways at school, and lose the ability to think very creatively from about the age of seven.
The book aims to help readers regain some of these lost skills, so they can have good ideas ‘on demand’, as well as being able to identify the best ideas.
Dennis gathered case studies from more than a dozen leading scientists and engineers, giving their examples in the book of how they came up with creative ideas and solutions to problems.
As well as writing his book, Dennis has taken his creative thinking tips into schools, to help pupils develop good life-long skills that will help them in their future careers.