---
title: "The Creativity Playbook: A Guide to Ideas and Innovation"
url: "https://thecreativityplaybook.com/"
description: "The Creativity Playbook by Dave Stewart and Mark Simmons is a hands-on guide to ideas and innovation, coming in 2027. Try the free brainstorming tools now."
updated: 2026-11-07
---

# The Creativity Playbook

A hands-on guide to ideas and innovation by Dave Stewart and Mark Simmons, coming in 2027. The brainstorming tools from the book are free to use now.

## Think like an artist

*The Business Playground* came out in 2010 with a simple message: think like an artist and you bring more meaning and connection to your work. Artists and musicians seem to have creativity in their DNA, and businesses have a lot to learn from how they think and make things.

*The Creativity Playbook* is the revised edition. It keeps the hands-on tools and adds a world that has changed: fewer, bigger companies, more decisions made by data, and a new kind of instrument in the creative signal chain, artificial intelligence.

> Without creativity, we're just another cog in the machine.

**Dave Stewart and Mark Simmons**, Authors, The Creativity Playbook(Introduction, June 2025 draft; wording may change)

## Try a tool

The Random Idea Generator turns the book’s Connected and Idea Spaghetti chapters into something you can use in a minute. It is free, runs in your browser and needs no account.

[Open the Random Idea Generator](https://thecreativityplaybook.com/tools/random-idea-generator/index.md)

More free tools are on the way, and they are all collected on the [brainstorming tools](https://thecreativityplaybook.com/tools/index.md) page.

## Play a game

Every chapter of the book ends with a board game. They are playable here, each with its rules explained and an example from the book.

[See the games](https://thecreativityplaybook.com/games/index.md)

## What’s inside

Twelve chapters, each built around one way of getting ideas moving.

- Chapter 1

    How to Play

    Play is how you unleash your natural creative potential.

- Chapter 2

    Idea Spaghetti

    The more ideas you throw at the wall, the better the odds that one sticks.

- Chapter 3

    Scavengers

    Great ideas are lying around. You have to be hunting for them.

- Chapter 4

    The Answer Is in the Question

    Better questions get you better answers.

- Chapter 5

    Left Brain, Meet Mr Right

    Logic and imagination work best as a team. Treat left and right brain as a metaphor, not anatomy.

- Chapter 6

    Brain Flash

    Draw it, picture it, and the solution shows up.

- Chapter 7

    The Idea Commune

    Ideas get bigger when people build on each other.

- Chapter 8

    Far Out

    Think big, then tell a story that makes people want to come along.

- Chapter 9

    Shoe Swapper

    Walk in someone else's shoes and the problem looks different.

- Chapter 10

    Connected

    Smash two unconnected things together and make something new.

- Chapter 11

    Kill the Idea

    Choosing which ideas get your time and money is half the job.

- Chapter 12

    Blast Off!

    The right environment launches ideas. The wrong one grounds them.

From the book

A Practical Guide to Ideas and Innovation, by Dave Stewart and Mark Simmons.

Read more in *The Creativity Playbook*, the revised edition of *The Business Playground: Where Creativity and Commerce Collide*, coming 2027.

Coming in 2027

## Related

### Try this next

- [random idea generator](https://thecreativityplaybook.com/tools/random-idea-generator/index.md)
- [business idea generator](https://thecreativityplaybook.com/tools/business-idea-generator/index.md)
- [creativity test](https://thecreativityplaybook.com/tools/creativity-test/index.md)