Name: Creative Confidence
ISBN: 9780385349369

Creative Confidence

"IDEO founder and Stanford d.school creator David Kelley and his brother Tom Kelley, IDEO partner and the author of the bestselling The Art of Innovation, have written a powerful and compelling book on unleashing the creativity that lies within each and every one of us. Too often, companies and individuals assume that creativity and innovation are the domain of the "creative types." But two of the leading experts in innovation, design, and creativity on the planet show us that each and every one of us is creative. In an incredibly entertaining and inspiring narrative that draws on countless stories from their work at IDEO and with many of the world's top companies, David and Tom Kelley identify the principles and strategies that will allow us to tap into our creative potential in our work lives, and in our personal lives, and allow us to innovate in terms of how we approach and solve problems. It is a book that will help each of us be more productive and successful in our lives and in our careers. "

What Hacker News says

smurdaJan 2026

Tom Kelley and David Kelley, founders of Stanford's Design School and IDEO (the industrial design firm that made things like Apple's first mouse and the standup toothpaste tube) have a great book, Creative Confidence.

Here's their website for the book, along with some tools and useful instructional videos https://www.creativeconfidence.com/tools/

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chrisweeklyJan 2026

+1 agreed, Creative Confidence is an insipiring book.

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lansteinMar 2023

Advice to Founders and CEOs

- Dear Founder (Maynard Webb) - The Hard Things About Hard Things (Ben Horowitz) - Straight Talk for Startups (Randy Komisar and Jantoon Reigersman) - The Founders’ Dilemmas (Noam Wasserman) - The Entrepreneur’s Daily Nietzsche (Brad Feld and Dave Jilk) - Build (Tony Fadell) - Zero to IPO (Frederic Kerrest) - The Great CEO Within (Matt Mochary)

Finance

- Wharton's Introduction to Financial Accounting course: [https://www.coursera.org/learn/wharton-accounting](https://w... - How Finance Works: The HBR Guide to Thinking Smart About the Numbers (Mihir Desai) - Financial Intelligence for Entrepreneurs: What You Really Need to Know About the Numbers (Karen Berman and Joe Knight)

Open-Book Company (Employee Ownership, Financial Literacy, Goal-setting)

- The Great Game of Business (Jack Stack and Bo Burlingham)

Legal

- Acceleration (Ryan Roberts) - The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Law and Strategy (Constance Bagley and Craig Dauchy)

Company Strategy and Direction (post-product/market fit)

- Crossing the Chasm (Geoff Moore) - Zone to Win (Geoff Moore) - Only the Paranoid Survive (Andy Grove) - Blitzscaling (Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh) - The Innovator's Dilemma (Clayton Christensen) - Good to Great (Jim Collins) - Playing to Win (A.G. Lafley and Roger Martin) - Tape Sucks (Frank Slootman) - Strategy vol. 1&2 (Harvard Business Review)

Pricing

- Monetizing Innovation (Georg Tacke and Madhavan Ramanujan) - Confessions of the Pricing Man (Hermann Simon)

Startup Phase

- The Lean Startup (Eric Ries) - The Four Steps to the Epiphany (Steve Blank) - Zero to One (Peter Thiel)

Management/Leadership

- The Effective Executive (Peter Drucker) - Managing Humans (Michael Lopp) - The Art of Leadership (Michael Lopp) - High Output Management (Andy Grove) - Managing Oneself (Peter Drucker) - Essentials: Management (First Round Capital) - The Making of a Manager (Julie Zhuo) - The Powell Principles (Oren Harari) - Radical Candor (Kim Scott) - Leading Matters (John L. Hennessy) (fantastic book list in the coda) - Turn the Ship Around (L. David Marquet) (this is THE book on delegation) - Principles (Ray Dalio)

COO/Succession Planning

- Riding Shotgun (Nathan Bennett and Stephen A. Miles)

People Performance/HR/Culture

- Powerful (Patty McCord) - No Rules Rules (Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer) - Netflix culture deck - The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (Patrick Lencioni) - Work Rules! (Laszlo Bock) - It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work (DHH and Jason Fried) - The Culture Map (Erin Meyer) - The Talent War (Mike Sarraille and George Randle) - Great People Decisions (Claudio Fernández-Aráoz) - The Holloway Guide to Technical Recruiting and Hiring (Ozzie Osman) - Punished by Rewards (Alfie Kohn)

Purpose, Passion, and Self

- Start with Why (Simon Sinek) - What You Do is Who You Are (Ben Horowitz) - Drive (Daniel Pink) - Mindset (Carol Dweck) - Grit (Angela Duckworth) - The Almanack of Naval Ravikant (Eric Jorgenson)

Fundraising/VC

- Secrets of Sand Hill Road (Scott Kupor) - Venture Deals (Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson) - Raising Venture Capital (Andy Sparks) - The Business of Venture Capital (Mahendra Ramsinghani) - Done Deals (Udayan Gupta) - The Power Law (Sebastian Mallaby) - VC (Tom Nicholas)

Board

- Boardroom Excellence (Paul Brountas) - Startups Boards (Brad Feld and Mahendra Ramsinghani)

M&A

- Winning (Jack Welch) - M&A chapter - Connecting the Dots (John Chambers) - M&A chapter

Marketing

- Data-Driven Marketing (Mark Jeffery) - Positioning (Al Ries and Jack Trout) - Scientific Advertising (Claude Hopkins) - Traction (Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares) - Behind the Cloud (Marc Benioff and Carlye Adler) - Ogilvy on Advertising (David Ogilvy) - Marketing High Technology (William Davidow)

Psychology

- Influence (Robert Cialdini)

Negotiation

First, read Influence (under Psychology), then, in order

- Thinking in Bets (Annie Duke) - Getting to Yes (Roger Fisher and William Ury) - Never Split the Difference (Chris Voss) - The Bald Truth (David Falk)

Self

- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Stephen Covey)

Design and UX

- Creative Confidence (Tom Kelley and David Kelley)

AI (Machine Learning, Deep Learning/Neural Networks)

- Andrew Ng's AI for Everyone course: [https://www.coursera.org/learn/ai-for-everyone](https://www....

Growth (Data Science, etc.)

- Hacking Growth (Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown)

Graph Theory

Product

- Inspired (Marty Cagan) - Joel on Software (Joel Spolsky)

Customer Loyalty/Customer Success

- Delivering Happiness (Tony Hsieh) - Setting the Table (Danny Meyer)

Finding a Startup Job

- Entering StartupLand (Jeffrey Bussgang)

CIO as ICP

- The CIO Paradox (Martha Heller) - Be the Business (Martha Heller)

Stories

- Made in America (Sam Walton) - Shoe Dog (Phil Knight) - The Everything Store (Brad Stone) - Built from Scratch (Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank) - Hard Drive (James Wallace) - Steve Jobs (Walter Isaacson) - Elon Musk (Ashlee Vance) - Creativity, Inc. (Ed Catmull) - The Ride of a Lifetime (Bob Iger) - Valley of Genius (Adam Fisher) - The Idea Factory (Jon Gertner) - Dealers of Lightning (Michael Hertzik) - Idea Man (Paul Allen) - Pour Your Heart Into It (Howard Schultz)

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chrisweeklyFeb 2020

IIRC, I first read about IDEO in "Creative Confidence", a book I enjoyed and found personally inspiring. Looking fwd to HN comments on this ~recent article.

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chrisweeklyDec 2019

Yeah, gotta find a way to ignore that voice. As a starting point, consider making art nobody else can see/hear/experience. Also, the book "Creative Confidence" is a great read.

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andrei_says_Dec 2017

Creative Confidence by Tom Kelley, founder of ideo. Changed my definition of and relationship with creativity.

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