— finalist, Business Book of the Year Awards 23

Garry successfully debunks the myth that it takes a genius or Stanford drop-out to build a successful business; we are all capable of brilliantly creative, innovative ideas. Garry’s excellent insight is that we need to learn to walk with the idea.

Jonny Ohlson, Founder and Executive Chair, Touchlight

The Creativity Factor uncovers the importance of creativity in business success and clarifies how you can use time spent outdoors to fully harness your creative potential.

Every successful business endeavour is born of a unique and innovative idea, and that in turn was born from the creative thinking of the people behind it. Then why is it the case that so many executives, founders and managers fail to actively develop and apply their creativity? The Creativity Factor clarifies how creativity is a key ingredient of effective leadership, before highlighting the strategies and approaches through which you can actively develop and cultivate your creative capabilities – not least of which is moving meetings and team-building exercises out of the office and into the great outdoors!

Rather than being an unchangeable trait, creativity is an ability and skill that we can train and improve. But how do you develop a creative mind-set that will lead to success? Creativity doesn’t tend to come from inspired ‘flashes’, but from sustained periods of thought and effort. Through a combined effort of both the conscious and subconscious mind, much easier to encourage and develop in an outdoor setting, previously unseen connections are made and original ideas flourish.

The Creativity Factor explores the scientific & practical evidence for entrepreneurial creativity, and explains the mechanisms, habits and techniques that help develop this skill. This uniquely holistic guide will provide you with a newfound awareness of your creative potential and how it can lead to business success.

Our bodies are not there just to carry our heads around. Garry Pratt makes a powerful case for utilizing the power of movement and walking for thinking and innovation. If you ever need inspiration to get out of the ‘bored’ room to out and about, read this book and you might be walking with a new spring and purpose in your step.

Dr. Mia Keinänen, leadership advisor, Russell Reynolds Associates

Inspiration & jealousy are the 2 words that come to mind when I read Garry’s book. Having spent my whole career, both as a professional and leader, in the global corporate world I’ve never been brave enough to venture into the less charted world of entrepreneurism, far less take advantage of outdoor world I love so much and be able to capitalise on Mark Twain’s words that ‘The secret of success is making your vocation your vacation.’ Something that The Creativity Factor clearly enables.

In doing so I’ve spent my life, whether in sport or business, always wrestling between opposing forces of trying to harness creativity and innovation, built on an inherent and sometimes maverick desire for adventure & excitement, with the perception of a restrictive barrier to truly leveraging them within a team environment and the often artificial boundaries of corporate processes and office environments.

Garry’s book breaks down the science and structure behind the inherent capability we all have to free our often repressed creative side, leveraging our natural empathy with the outside and using it as an enabler for innovation. For me personally, as Garry emphasises in his book, exercise & being outside are natural avenues to release stress, gain clarity and regularly have been sources of moments of creativity and innovation. 

As a leader in the more structured, corporate, environment I strive, like many others, to create an environment for creativity, innovation leading to high performing teams. The idea of using the outdoors, as Garry outlines in his book, tied to practical science behind it, is making me rethink how I can reuse something that maybe I naturally do as an individual into an even more productive tool when used in the corporate world – to unleash the potential we all strive for to become more competitive, unleashing creativity and innovation from the artificial boundaries we create.

I can’t think of a better way to break the creativity barriers and unleash the innovation potential than following Garry’s advice and take advantage of the natural creativity of “Outside Thinking’ perhaps inspired by the free spirited worlds of Kerouac and Tom Waits and to coin Garry’s first line in the introduction – You’d be an idiot not to!

Nick Redshaw, Senior Vice President Oracle, former Global GM & VP IBM, former Wasps & Bath Premiership Rugby Player (adrenaline seeking outdoor enthusiast still thinking he’s 20!)