© dominion. All rights reserved. developed by :: Fomax Tech ::                   James L.Adams             Professor Adams is one of the world’s leading authorities on creativity. He is the author of the classic book Conceptual Blockbusting which has been translated into over a dozen languages and has been in print for over 30 years. Educated in both engineering and art, he has studied creativity since the 1950’s while also being employed in highly creative organizations. At the Jet Propulsion Laboratory he was involved in designing the first spacecraft to explore Venus and Mars. At Stanford University he has taught courses in creativity and change in organizations, the design process, product design, and the relation between science, technology, and society. He has chaired the Stanford department of Engineering Management and Science, the Program in Values, Technology and Science, the Design Group of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and has served as Associate Dean of the School of Engineering, and as head of the Faculty Advisory Board, a group of seven professors who advise the president. He has been a faculty member and/or a dean in many university executive programs, such as Managing Innovation, the Engineering Executive Program, the American Electronic Association Executive Program, and Market Strategy for Technology Companies. He has taught in many executive programs at other locations and won a number of outstanding teaching awards. Professor Adams has consulted and conducted seminars on the topics of creativity, innovation, general problem-solving, organizational change, management of R&D, planning, and design, for over 100 companies, ranging from large to small and technical to financial. He has also been a consultant and lecturer to a large number of non-profit government, educational, and professional organizations and groups. Professor Adams has served in many other capacities, such as technical director and board member of Mast Immunosystems, a Silicon Valley start-up, president and board member of the Technology Center of Silicon Valley, now the San Jose Tech Museum, member of the California Governor’s Panel on Toxic Wastes, and Sigma Xi Lecturer. Because of the breadth of his experience – company employment at many levels, consulting, teaching, and research – he brings an approach to understanding and managing creativity that is both practical and theoretical. He believes in the importance of understanding the creative process. But he also believes that creativity cannot be divorced from control, that modern creativity involves many people, and that implementation of ideas in a company is more difficult than the generation of the ideas themselves. In addition to Conceptual Blockbusting, Professor Adams has written Care and Feeding of Ideas, another book on creativity, and Flying Buttresses, Entropy, and O-Rings, a book on the nature of engineering. He is presently working on a third book on creativity, a book on industrial product quality, and a book on the nature of technology.   back to thought leaders