Associate

Arthur B. VanGundy Ph.D., has designed or facilitated brainstorming retreats for over 20 years for clients such as: Air Canada, Hershey Foods, Kraft Foods, Monsanto, Quaker Oats, S.C. Johnson Wax, the Singapore government, and Sunbeam. He is considered a pioneer on idea generation techniques and has written eleven books including: Techniques of Structured Problem Solving, Idea Power, and Brain Boosters for Business Advantage. He wrote the creativity training program for the American Management Association and the creativity chapter for The American Marketing Association’s Marketing Encyclopedia.

Arthur B. VanGundy is Professor of Communication at the University of Oklahoma and President of VanGundy & Associates, a creativity and innovation consulting firm. He has over 23 years experience in higher education and idea generation training and facilitation. His academic degrees are from Ohio Wesleyan University (B.A.), Miami University—Ohio (M.S.), and The Ohio State University (Ph.D.).

VanGundy has developed three idea generation aids: The Product Improvement CheckList (PICL), the Circles of Creativity (1985), IdeaPro idea generation software (in progress), and wrote the creativity training program for the American Management Association.

His books have been cited over 100 times in such journals as

Management Science,
Decision Sciences,
Academy of Management Journal,
The Journal of Product Innovation Management,
Journal of Advertising Research,
Psychology Today

Books

108 Ways to Get a Bright Idea (and Increase Your Creative Potential). (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1983.)

Techniques of Structured Problem Solving (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1981; Norwegian translation, 1985; adopted by the U.K. Open University, 1991). This book is considered by many to be the “bible” of problem solving techniques. It was the first comprehensive book on techniques and still is used as a resource book by practitioners in marketing research, new product development, Research & Development, training and many other fields. It also has served as the primary reference resource for many idea generation books currently on the market.

Managing Group Creativity: A Modular Approach to Problem Solving. (NY: AMACOM, Division of the American Management Associations, 1984. American Management Association Book Club Alternate Selection. Translated into Norwegian by Universitetsforlaget, Oslo Norway, 1987.)

Training Your Creative Mind, Rev., 2nd Ed. (Buffalo, NY: Bearly Limited, 1991.)

Idea Power: Techniques and Resources to Unleash the Creativity in Your Organization. (New York: AMACOM (Division of the American Management Association, 1992; Fortune Book Club Alternate Selection, Chinese and Hebrew translations; Winner of Success magazine Gold Medal Best Business Product of the Year).

Brain Boosters for Business Advantage: (San Diego, CA: Pfeiffer & Co., 1995, now Jossey- Bass/Pfeiffer. Indian translation, 1995.)

Creative Problem Solving for Managers. (College Park, MD: University of Maryland, 1997.)

101 Great Games and Activities. (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, Inc., Div. Of Simon and Schuster, 1998.)

ORCHESTRATING COLLABORATION AT WORK:
Using music, improv, storytelling and other arts to improve teamwork (with Linda Naiman). Available through Wiley, March 2003.

Related links: Articles

• Air Cliche
• Brainwriting
• Taking the "Fuzz" Out of the Front End of New Product Development