I have just read Bernard Roth‘s The Achievement Habit: Stop Wishing, Start Doing, and Take Command of Your Life and will soon review it. Meanwhile, here is a mini-interview of Roth by his friend and colleague, David Kelley. Thank you, Amazon, for providing it.

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You’ve been at this a long time. Words like creativity, innovation, design thinking, and empathy fly around. What resonates with you? What words do you like to use?

To me these words tend to be overused. I’m not a big fan of any of these words. I would say empathy and design thinking are the words I currently use the most. I stay away from innovation and creativity as much as possible.

When I was a design student I always felt that creativity had the connotation that either you had it or you didn’t from birth. It was a funny word in that way for me.

There were studies that concluded there are certain characteristics many creative people have. For example, if you played classical music or liked poetry the odds were you would be among the more creative people. However, there was also the idea of unleashing buried creative potential, which resonates more with how we think of it nowadays.

Almost everybody that I meet, when I say I’m friends with Bernie, they say “Designer and Society.” What’s been the big deal about that class is that it affects people’s lives so strongly.

It’s empowering. It’s exactly what you call creative confidence. It unleashes the sense that: “I can do stuff. I don’t have to live in relationships that don’t work. I don’t have to have dreams of someday doing something. I can go out and do it now.” The point the class makes is that your life is right now. Basically you are not going to change when you graduate. If you don’t get the habit of doing right now, chances are you’re never going to get it. The class is organized to give you the experience of doing, you have to do something significant right now. Once you do it, wow, then you’re off and running.

What are some examples? What are the kinds of things people do?

One of my favorites is the student who had a strained relationship with his father. He reconciled with his father, and then three months later his father suddenly died. That was powerful.

You know, you’re doing a lot of damage at the d.school by teaching classes and helping students. By damage, I mean good. What do you expect … I mean, it wasn’t that easy to write the book? Although it seemed like you did it pretty straightforwardly. What do you expect to accomplish with the book that you can’t do here by teaching students?

What’s happened with the book is interesting. I wrote the book as a personal expression, without even having much expectation. Actually I was just going to put it on the web and not worry about it. I am very pleasantly surprised by what has been happening. Starting with friends reading the galleys, stories keep coming back to me of how the book is assisting people. I just read an email from a woman who was inspired by my book to write her own book. Someone else got a big personal insight regarding his son’s psychological breakdown. A woman in her 88th year is meeting with a group of other seniors and using activities in my book to give them meaningful interactions. It turns out the book is a surrogate for the class, in that people get inspiration out of it and it gives them permission to do stuff and suggests ways of doing it. That’s a big plus in my file.

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Bernard Roth is one of the founders of the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (the d.school) and is active in its development: currently, he serves as Academic Director. His design interests include organizing and presenting workshops on creativity, group interactions, and the problem solving process. Formerly he researched the kinematics, dynamics, control, and design of computer controlled mechanical devices. In kinematics, he studied the mathematical theory of rigid body motions and its application to the design of machines.

David Kelley‘s work is dedicated to helping people gain confidence in their creative abilities. He employs a project based methodology called Design Thinking within both the Product Design Program and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design. Design Thinking is based on building empathy for user needs, developing solutions with iterative prototyping, and inspiring ideas for the future through storytelling. The Product Design program emphasizes the blending of engineering innovation, human values, and manufacturing concerns into a single curriculum. Kelley teaches engineering design methodology, the techniques of quick prototyping to prove feasibility, and design through understanding of user needs. His most recent book, Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All, was co-authored with his brother, Tom and published by Crown Business (October 2013).