Author’s Note: As an elementary school principal, longtime educator, and graduate student studying Creativity and Change Leadership, I am deeply interested in how teams can build creative capacity to support teaching and learning. This review is written for educational leaders, teachers, and anyone working to build innovative school (or organizational) cultures.
Chris Grivas and Gerard Puccio’s The Innovative Team: Unleashing Creative Potential for Breakthrough Results (Grivas & Puccio, 2018) is a nonfiction fable that explores how organizations can strengthen innovation through the FourSight creative problem-solving model. Grounded in creativity research and connected to the Creative Problem Solving (CPS) tradition pioneered by Alex Osborn, the book situates innovation not reserved for a few but as a learnable process. Although the story is organizational-based (not an education setting), there are many parallels to schools and districts, which I will continue to reference. The text is perfectly fitting for an important moment in education and leadership, when rapid change demands that teams think differently about how they work together. Early in the book, the authors reference research showing that many leaders feel unprepared to respond to accelerating change, showing the urgency of building creativity across organizations.
The book follows a team navigating organizational challenges with the guidance of Kate Murdock, a character who helps the group understand the FourSight model: clarifying the problem, generating ideas, developing solutions, and implementing those ideas. Through this narrative structure, Grivas and Puccio illustrate how teams often jump prematurely to solutions, or what I recognize as the “spaghetti at the wall” approach, rather than engaging in the creative process. The story demonstrates that innovation is not accidental; it emerges from disciplined movement between divergence and convergence.
One powerful moment occurs when Kate explains her need to slow down and gather information before acting, stating, “It’s not easy for me but I solve problems more effectively when I do it. So I’m committed to gathering all of the facts we need” (Grivas & Puccio, 2018, p. 24). This moment highlights a theme: individuals bring different thinking preferences to creative work. Some are clarifiers, others ideators, developers, or implementers. The authors argue that innovation improves when teams understand these differences rather than misinterpreting them as weaknesses, which I would argue happens frequently in schools where there is no clear process.
The book also emphasizes process awareness as a form of accountability. People lead with their preferences and that awareness of process builds self-awareness and captures the authors’ belief that reflection is essential to creative growth. This resonates strongly with my leadership work in schools, where teams often move quickly toward action without shared clarity. The FourSight framework provides a common language that helps teams pause, ask better questions, and generate stronger solutions.
Grivas and Puccio further reinforce the importance of true brainstorming and tools such as POINt, demonstrating how structured divergence leads to more innovative outcomes. The team in the story eventually realizes that generating many ideas increases the likelihood of breakthrough thinking, and that convergence should occur intentionally during development, not prematurely.
I found the book both practical and inspiring. It reinforces a belief I hold deeply: creativity can be taught, practiced, and embedded into team culture. In my role as a principal, this perspective directly connects to supporting teachers in designing classrooms where students learn to question, ideate, refine, and implement. The book expands my thinking by showing that innovation is not only about classroom strategies but also about how adult teams operate. When leadership teams model creative process, it trickles down into instructional practice.
One of the most meaningful takeaways appears later in the book, where the authors explain that organizations that reflect on their processes become more open to novelty, address conflict sooner, and experience less interpersonal tension because team members value diverse thinking preferences (Grivas & Puccio, 2018, p. 239). This insight reframes conflict as a signal of creative potential rather than dysfunction, a perspective that feels especially important in school leadership.
The book’s approach is highly relevant and still cutting edge because it blends research, practical tools, and narrative storytelling. While the fable format simplifies the topic, it makes it powerful for educators and leaders who may be new to creativity frameworks. The call to action is clear: if we want different results, we must engage in different processes.
The Innovative Team reinforces that innovation is both individual and collective work. As the authors conclude, “All of us are creative but knowing how we are creative is key to being able to apply ourselves effectively to any given challenge. Armed with that self-knowledge, we can create conditions for ourselves and others that will enable innovative results” (Grivas & Puccio, 2018). For schools striving to prepare students for an unpredictable future, this message is clear. Creative teams build creative classrooms and that is where meaningful change begins.
Reference
Grivas, C., & Puccio, G. J. (2018). The innovative team: Unleashing creative potential for breakthrough results. North Atlantic Books.
Leave a Reply