About The Author
Samuel Sanders is an award-winning entrepreneur and member of the Nonfiction Authors Association, who has seen entrepreneurship, innovation, creativity, problem-solving, and ideation in action at a Fortune 500 company, an Inc. 5000 fastest-growing company, incubators, and companies he started himself. Your Next Big Idea is a business workbook that Samuel published based on his innovation-based work experience at large companies, small high-growth companies, and companies he started himself. Your Next Big Idea answers the question: How do entrepreneurs, inventors, creatives, and innovators develop their ideas? Since publishing, it has received positive reception. It was top 1000 Kindle book on Amazon, a Top 15 Business book on Apple Books. It has won 20+ awards, including the IndieReader Discovery Awards Business Book of the Year & Independent Press Book Awards: Best Debut Nonfiction Book. It was featured on Bookshop's listicle Gifts for New Graduates, and for Publisher's Weekly Reviews, which only chooses to review 1.7% of books outside major publishers. If you are curious about reviews, you can see other book reviews and other press features. The book led to a feature on ABC's Good Morning Washington talking about entrepreneurship and creativity. Samuel also writes articles about creativity, entrepreneurship, play, and innovation in our society including this one for the LA Times (articles from the Boston Globe and Wall Street Journal coming out soon). Samuel speak as well, and recently his speaking materials were brought in for use in the Syracuse University Project Advance Entrepreneurship Program. You can see a testimonial here. On top of that, the University of the District of Columbia Workforce Development and Life-Long Learning Program hired Samuel to teach Micro-Entrepreneurship 101 as an Adjunct Professor. Currently, Samuel is also the COO of North Star Games, a board game company whose most popular brand, Wits and Wagers has moved 3 million+ copies. Samuel is also the board game designer of Paint the Roses: The Cheshire Kitten. In his free time he also pursues improv and stand-up comedy. He grew up just outside Philadelphia, PA, before attending Syracuse University. He currently live in Washington, D.C.
Synopsis of Your Next Big Idea
The goal of Your Next Big Idea - Improve Your Creativity and Problem-Solving is to help the reader develop innovative ideas. Whether those ideas are giant multi-million-dollar businesses or simply ways to improve everyday activities, this book describes a process that can be used to help the reader originate and cultivate ideas that can change their life. It is styled as an interactive workbook where the main character is the reader, with each section featuring exercises that will challenge the reader's perspective, improve creativity and help them become a better problem solver. The book is split up into six sections. The first section outlines how to notice problems, needs, wants and questions in our everyday world. The book then follows with a second section that examines how to erase stigmas or assumptions about these problems, needs, wants and questions. Following that, the book investigates how to create solutions to these problems, needs and wants using the skills learned from the first two sections. Next, the reader takes those solutions to section four where they do a feasibility check to see if the solutions and ideas are viable. Section five explains how and why the reader should share those ideas and solutions with others to receive feedback and improve upon them. By the end of the fifth section, each reader should understand the full creative idea innovation process. The final section builds off the process and explores the next steps to follow to implement these innovative ideas. Ultimately, "Your Next Big Idea - Improve Your Creativity and Problem-Solving" is essentially a complete program that guides the reader to come up with their own next big idea.