Roger von Oech (born February 16, 1948) is an American speaker, conference organizer, author, and toy-maker whose focus has been on the study of
creativity
Creativity is a phenomenon whereby something new and valuable is formed. The created item may be intangible (such as an idea, a scientific theory, a musical composition, or a joke) or a physical object (such as an invention, a printed literary w ...
.
Professional life
In 1975, von Oech earned his Ph.D. from Stanford University in the self-created interdisciplinary program "History of Ideas".
Shortly afterwards, he began providing services in creativity consulting, working with companies such as
Apple
An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...
,
IBM,
Disney
The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was originally founded on October ...
,
Sony
, commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...
, and
Intel
Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...
.
In the 1980s, he created and produced the "Innovation in Industry" conference series in Palo Alto, which included Silicon Valley entrepreneurs such as
Steve Jobs
Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American entrepreneur, industrial designer, media proprietor, and investor. He was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple; the chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar; a ...
,
Bill Gates
William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate and philanthropist. He is a co-founder of Microsoft, along with his late childhood friend Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions ...
,
Bob Metcalfe
Robert Melancton Metcalfe (born April 7, 1946) is an engineer and entrepreneur from the United States who helped pioneer the Internet starting in 1970. He co-invented Ethernet, co-founded 3Com and formulated Metcalfe's law, which describes the e ...
,
Charles Schwab,
Alan Kay
Alan Curtis Kay (born May 17, 1940) published by the Association for Computing Machinery 2012 is an American computer scientist best known for his pioneering work on object-oriented programming and windowing graphical user interface (GUI) d ...
, and
Nolan Bushnell
Nolan Kay Bushnell (born February 5, 1943) is an American businessman and electrical engineer. He established Atari, Inc. and the Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre chain. He has been inducted into the Video Game Hall of Fame and the Consume ...
of
Atari
Atari () is a brand name that has been owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by French publisher Atari SA through a subsidiary named Atari Interactive. The original Atari, Inc. (1972–1992), Atari, Inc., ...
.
Decks
Creative Whack Pack
In 1988, von Oech created the Creative Whack Pack, a deck of 64 cards with illustrations and strategies for stimulating creativity. It was designed to be a portable version of his creativity workshops, and it has sold over a million copies.
Creative Whack Company
In 2004, he started the Creative Whack company. Roger's definition of 'whack' is creativity.
Geometric Toys
Ball of Whacks
The Ball of Whacks consists of 30
rhombic pyramid shaped magnetic blocks. These pieces combine to form a
rhombic triacontahedron
In geometry, the rhombic triacontahedron, sometimes simply called the triacontahedron as it is the most common thirty-faced polyhedron, is a convex polyhedron with 30 rhombic faces. It has 60 edges and 32 vertices of two types. It is a Cata ...
. They can be combined to form many other shapes. The Ball of Whacks comes with a creativity guidebook that gives instructions on using the product. There are three single-color versions made with either red, blue, or black pieces; and one six-color version with black, white, yellow, green, blue, and red pieces.
X-Ball
The X-Ball consists of 30 X-shaped pieces that connect together to form a skeletal
icosidodecahedron
In geometry, an icosidodecahedron is a polyhedron with twenty (''icosi'') triangular faces and twelve (''dodeca'') pentagonal faces. An icosidodecahedron has 30 identical vertices, with two triangles and two pentagons meeting at each, and 60 id ...
. The X-Ball comes with a guidebook and in the color red.
Y-Ball
The Y-Ball consists of 30 Y-shaped pieces that when put together, form a
truncated icosahedron
In geometry, the truncated icosahedron is an Archimedean solid, one of 13 convex isogonal nonprismatic solids whose 32 faces are two or more types of regular polygons. It is the only one of these shapes that does not contain triangles or squares. ...
. The Y-Ball comes in the color blue.
Star Ball
The Star Ball consists of 16 five-legged "star pieces" and 16 three legged "tri" pieces. These combine to form a skeletal
rhombic triacontahedron
In geometry, the rhombic triacontahedron, sometimes simply called the triacontahedron as it is the most common thirty-faced polyhedron, is a convex polyhedron with 30 rhombic faces. It has 60 edges and 32 vertices of two types. It is a Cata ...
. The pieces have polarity dots to help the user connect the right sides together. The Star Ball comes in Yellow.
Eureka Ball
The Eureka Ball consists of 12 magnetic design pieces , each a seven-sided, truncated pentagonal pyramid. Together, these Eureka pieces form a beautiful 12-sided
dodecahedron
In geometry, a dodecahedron (Greek , from ''dōdeka'' "twelve" + ''hédra'' "base", "seat" or "face") or duodecahedron is any polyhedron with twelve flat faces. The most familiar dodecahedron is the regular dodecahedron with regular pentagon ...
. The Eureka Ball also has polarity dots on its pieces to help the user connect them together correctly. The Eureka Ball comes in Red.
["Eureka Ball." ''Creative Whack Company''. Web. 18 Aug. 2013]
Books
* ''A Whack on the Side of the Head: How You Can Be More Creative'' (1st ed. 1983, 4th ed. 2008, trans. into 22 languages)
* ''A Kick in the Seat of the Pants: Using Your Explorer, Artist, Judge, and Warrior to Be More Creative'' (1986)
* ''Expect the Unexpected, or You Won't Find It: A Creativity Tool Based on the Ancient Wisdom of Heraclitus'' (2001)
Notes
{{DEFAULTSORT:Oech, Roger von
American business writers
Business speakers
Stanford University alumni
Living people
1948 births