Creative Acts for Curious People

By Sarah Stein Greenberg, MBA ’06

Ten Speed Press

September2021

This vibrant, illustrated book is full of unconventional and practical ways to help you bring creative approaches to any challenge you face. Exercises like Expert Eyes hone your observation skills, How to Talk to Strangers fosters understanding, and Designing Tools for Teams builds creative leadership. They’re at once light-hearted, tough, surprising, and impactful — and they’ll help you turn curiosity into ideas, and ideas into action.

Creative Acts for Curious People includes more than eighty assignments, countless ideas, and memorable stories from throughout the d.school’s decade-plus history. This collection was curated by executive director Sarah Stein Greenberg, MBA ’06 from some of the world’s most inventive minds, including d.school and IDEO founder David Kelley, Readymade magazine founder Grace Hawthorne, innovative choreographer Aleta Hayes, Google chief innovation evangelist Frederik Pferdt, and many more.

Selected Editorial Reviews

Attending classes at the d.school changed my life. I learned that to build empathy and creativity, you have to break out of habits and patterns to see the world in new ways. This book is packed end to end with ways to do just that by taking any part of the design process to a new level, be it in the initial need-finding stage or deep into the execution phase. The illustrations are great too!

Mike Krieger, Co-Founder, Instagram

I’ve seen firsthand how the d.school thinks about creativity and design. Creative Acts for Curious People makes the genius of Sarah Stein Greenberg and the d.school available and accessible to everyone. The experiences inside this book teach both the hard and soft skills that we all need to navigate today’s world with agility, resilience, and imagination.

Lorraine Twohill, Chief Marketing Officer, Google