Best Creativity Books: 50 Picks Recommended by CEOs

Steven Pressfield names Resistance, the self-doubt and procrastination that stop anyone setting out to write, paint or build, and prescribes turning professional by showing up every day to practice the craft. James Clear recommends it to anyone struggling against that force.

Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull describes how the studio built a culture where creative work thrives, opening up its story meetings, postmortems and Braintrust sessions. Mark Zuckerberg singles out Catmull’s theory that people are innately creative and that many obstacles get in the way.

Austin Kleon expands a viral talk into ten illustrated rules for people who make things, beginning with studying, crediting and transforming the work of others. Ryan Holiday argues that this kind of borrowing from the greats is how art actually gets made.

Adam Grant studies how non-conformists champion new ideas: judging which ideas are strong, speaking up, building coalitions, timing action and nurturing originality in children and teams. Tony Hsieh and Richard Branson both recommend it.

In the follow-up to Steal Like an Artist, Austin Kleon turns from making work to getting it seen, with ten rules on sharing process, posting something small daily and the communal nature of creative work. Ali Abdaal says it changed how he thought about sharing online.

CreativeLive founder Chase Jarvis treats creativity as a habit anyone can build, organized around his IDEA system: imagine, design a daily practice, execute and amplify through community. Brene Brown endorses him as the right guide to what creativity can change.

Mason Currey compiles how 161 writers, painters, composers and scientists organized their working days, from Trollope’s morning word counts to Balanchine working while ironing. James Clear’s takeaway is that every great artist keeps a set time and place for uninterrupted work.

Treating art as something given rather than sold, Lewis Hyde draws on anthropology, economics and literature to ask how creative work survives in a money culture. Austin Kleon says it reaffirmed his view that generosity toward an audience pays off.

Copywriter turned cartoonist Hugh MacLeod sets out 40 short keys to creativity, arguing that an idea need only be one’s own and that watering work down to sell it makes it worse. Derek Sivers calls it concise wisdom on creativity from an artist.

IDEO founder David Kelley and his brother Tom reject the idea that creativity belongs to creative types, drawing on IDEO and d.school stories for strategies to use it at work and at home. Cristina Riesen counts it among the books behind her unconventional career moves.

Edward de Bono contrasts the step-by-step vertical thinking taught in schools with lateral thinking, and offers techniques, for individuals or groups, that force a problem to be seen from several angles. Andra Zaharia recommends it to people building a marketing career.

Travel writer Eric Weiner visits Athens, Hangzhou, Florence, Vienna and Silicon Valley to ask why creative genius clustered in certain places and eras, and how much culture matters in fostering it. Colleen McCreary found surprises in its account of innovative communities.

Robert Henri’s teaching at New York’s Art Students League, collected by a former pupil, mixes technical advice with reflections on the artist’s place in society. Jack Dorsey describes it as creativity seen through an art student’s eyes, where mastering tools is a constant practice.

Using her own working process, Elizabeth Gilbert explores the sources of inspiration and how to keep making things despite fear, blending spiritual ideas with daily habits. Mark Manson says he enjoyed it far more than he expected.

Seth Godin argues that flying too low is the greater danger, since conformity no longer brings safety while creativity is scarce, and urges treating art as an attitude anyone can adopt. Scott Perry says it helped him see what delivering creative work that matters requires.

Steven Pressfield’s follow-up to The War of Art tracks a long creative project from start to finish and marks the predictable points where resistance strikes, with steps to beat it. Andrew Huberman says he loves it.

Biomedical researcher James H. Austin uses his own laboratory work to show how persistence and luck combine with creativity, classifying kinds of luck and examining the creative process. Marc Andreessen calls it the best book he has read on serendipity in any creative endeavor.

Steven Johnson traces the settings in which new ideas form, from Darwin’s coral reef to modern cities, describing the slow hunch and the adjacent possible. He identifies seven principles that help new ideas emerge and holds that today’s tools let far more people pursue bold innovation.

Olivia Fox Cabane and Judah Pollack use neuroscience to explain breakthrough ideas, pairing the brain’s wandering creative mode with its focused executive mode, and offer exercises for reaching insight. Joe Gebbia found its account of how the brain produces creative ideas fascinating.

Tom Kelley describes how IDEO keeps producing new products, rejecting the lone genius myth in favor of teamwork, rule breaking and a fast cycle of brainstorming and building. Seth Godin says seeing how well IDEO designs raises one’s own expectations.

Scott Perry applies Stoic philosophy to the creative process, urging artists to align values with talents and work from purpose rather than passion, with short exercises in each chapter. Seth Godin says it opens eyes to another way of doing work that matters.

Ray Bradbury’s essays on creativity mix advice on finding original ideas and a personal voice with stories from his career, including how to feed a muse. Maria Popova values how he passes on both practical guidance and excitement for the craft.

Lynda Barry’s collage guide teaches a playful method for writing and remembering, treating play as serious and not knowing as an answer in itself. Austin Kleon advises visual thinkers to do its exercises daily in a private notebook.

Roger von Oech uses puzzles, cartoons, exercises and metaphors to break through the mental blocks that hold back creative thinking. Nick Janetakis says it can alter the way people think and enjoys how its puzzles train independent thought.

David Kord Murray argues that new ideas combine existing ones, and sets out six steps from defining a problem to borrowing, combining, incubating, judging and enhancing. Nicolas Jouvenceau says it convinced him creativity is a learnable process, not an inborn talent.

In Dan Norris’s view everyone is creative, yet a force he names Hate keeps people from producing anything, and he shows how to overcome it to write, podcast, take photographs or start a business. Andra Zaharia recommends it to people starting a marketing career.

Stanford professor Tina Seelig turns her creativity course into a guide built on the Invention Cycle, moving from imagination to creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship. Cat Williams-Treloar credits its guidance with turning ideas into real projects.

Austin Kleon offers ten rules for staying creative over a lifetime, treating the creative life as a loop built on daily routine, time offline, walks and attention to what matters. Todd Henry calls it a great book.

Gordon MacKenzie draws on three decades at Hallmark to show how creative people can escape the giant hairball of rules and habit that drags organizations toward mediocrity. Todd Henry says no business book shaped his early career more, calling it an insider’s view of creative leadership.

Warren Bennis and Patricia Ward Biederman study six Great Groups, among them the Manhattan Project, Disney and Black Mountain College, to learn how talented people collaborate on creative work. Todd Henry praises it as a guide to leading creative groups.

Jeff Goins dismantles the starving artist myth with rules for thriving creatively: apprentice under a master, steal from influences, collaborate, take strategic risks and earn money to fund more art. Scott Perry chose it as his next read after abandoning a weaker book.

Rick Rubin, the music producer, began with the aim of explaining how to make great art and ended with a book about a way of being, arguing that being an artist rests on a relationship to the world. David Senra recommends it.

Questlove collects creative philosophies and stories from his career and collaborators such as George Clinton, David Byrne and Björk, covering mentors, apprenticeship, networks and critics. Jimmy Fallon says he cannot think of anyone more qualified to write on creativity.

Safi Bahcall’s book is mainly about how organizational structure, more than culture, decides whether teams nurture or kill radical ideas, using the physics of phase transitions. Adam Grant notes its argument that creativity depends heavily on structure.

Walter Isaacson’s biography, built on Leonardo’s notebooks, is mainly a life story, linking the painter to the investigator of birds, anatomy and optics. Its closing lessons include relentless curiosity, and Bill Gates praises how it draws Leonardo’s many interests together.

Beth Comstock’s memoir is mainly about leading change at GE, from Ecomagination to the FastWorks method, arguing that fear rather than a lack of ideas holds people back. Simon Sinek names imagination as the skill she is best placed to teach.

Anne Lamott’s guide is mainly about writing, from getting started and short assignments to false starts, writer’s block and writing groups. Tim Ferriss calls it one of his favorite books and thinks startup founders could learn from it too.

Producer Brian Grazer shows how his curiosity conversations with scientists, spies and artists fed the ideas behind films such as Apollo 13 and A Beautiful Mind. It is mainly about curiosity, and Sheryl Sandberg ties that trait to innovation and disruptive thinking.

Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheal report on how Navy SEALs, executives and scientists pursue altered states such as flow. It is mainly about high performance, but Adam Johnston notes how it shows those states being used for creativity and vision.

Paul Graham’s essays are mainly about programming, startups and wealth creation, with the title essay comparing hackers to painters as makers and others on beauty in software design. Evan Williams singles out its chapters on how wealth is made.

Neal Gabler’s biography is mainly a life of Walt Disney, tracing how he turned animation into an art form with Mickey Mouse, Snow White and Fantasia. Brian Chesky regards Disney as a hero and the model of a successful founder.

Conductor Benjamin Zander and therapist Rosamund Stone Zander offer twelve practices, such as Giving an A and Rule Number 6, for bringing creativity into work and life. It is mainly about reframing, and Andra Zaharia says it taught her the power of framing.

Rilke’s ten letters to a young cadet torn between poetry and the army are mainly about how a poet should feel, love and search for truth, urging trust in inner judgment over criticism. Todd Henry calls it mentorship for young artists.

The 99U collection gathers advice from twenty contributors on daily routines, protecting focus and keeping a creative mind sharp. It is mainly about time management, and Andrew Elliott finds it useful especially for people in creative fields.

IDEO chief executive Tim Brown argues that innovation comes from a rigorous design thinking process rather than flashes of genius, built on fast, cheap prototypes. It is mainly about organizational innovation, and Doug McMillon recommends it.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s research on optimal experience is mainly about happiness and absorption, describing the flow state whose hallmarks include deep enjoyment and creativity. Austin Kleon, rereading it, linked one passage to his own blackout poems.

Daniel Pink argues that the future belongs to right-brain thinkers, the artists, inventors and storytellers who think creatively and holistically, and names six human abilities to master. It is mainly about the future of work, and Park Howell recommends it.

Dave Gray and his coauthors gather more than 80 games for bringing creativity and structure to group work, from visual thinking to role play. It is mainly a facilitation toolkit, and Ola Olusoga values its frameworks for turning fuzzy ideas into output.

Behance founder Scott Belsky studied productive creative people and teams to show that execution, not ideas, is scarce, with practices such as killing ideas freely. It is mainly about execution, and Andreas Zhou credits it with getting him past analysis paralysis.

Richard Florida’s study is mainly economic, arguing that a class of people who work by creating new forms increasingly shapes workplaces, firms and cities. Audrey Russo recommends it.