May 19th 2010
Loading ...Creative innovation 2010
A management consultant, an economist and a banker walk into a bar … start of a joke, or a break in a business conference, on any day, in any city, just about anywhere in the world?
When Tania de Jong decided to stage a leadership conference, she knew she wanted a different dynamic. She also knew that to get different outcomes she’d have to rewrite the script.
De Jong is a performing artist – one of Australia’s leading sopranos – with a law degree and ten years experience as a social entrepreneur and business agent provocateur. With that background, she is well positioned to diagnose what she sees as the dearth of creative thinking in the Australian business community. ‘Whenever I speak to a room full of business leaders, I ask how many see themselves as creative thinkers. Rarely more than a third put up their hand. Creative thinking is not valued as a dimension of business leadership. Of course these people have creative capacity. They simply don’t practice it, nor to they know how to nurture it in their teams’.
This is the problem that Creative Innovation 2010 (Melbourne 8th – 10th September) is set to address. ‘Business needs to reignite its creative energy’, she explains. ‘To engage in new ways of thinking, managing and leading, to achieve more innovative, more powerful outcomes for the bottom line, and to change the way it thinks about broader social challenges. To re-invent the future!’
To get business to think differently, Tania is doing the conference differently.
First, she has started with an impressive array of speakers: creative thinking guru, Edward de Bono; mental health expert and Australian of the Year, Patrick McGorry; world-class tennis player, Paul McNamee; and rural entrepreneur, Claire Penniceard. She has experts in robotics, finance, design, social enterprise, ethics, engineering, leadership and the list goes on. But Creative Innovation, isn’t simply about listening to the wise and the experienced. De Jong is determined to create an environment of active engagement.
‘We have recruited a group to act as catalysts, or agents provocateurs’, she explains. ‘It will be their job to move throughout the proceedings and challenge the speakers and the audience to be involved, to think differently and to speak out.’
To this end, Creative Innovation 2010 has an artist in residence, a diva in residence (de Jong herself), a poet in residence and a composer in residence. Working with them will be agents provocateurs Peter Ellyard (futurist and author of Designing 2050: Pathways to sustainable prosperity on spaceship earth), Dr Michael Porter (Director of Research at the Committee for the Economic Development of Australia) and Tim Wilson (a public policy commentator).
‘I wanted to bring a diversity of people together across all barriers: age, industry sector, seniority, large corporation and small business, ethnicity and experience, to discuss how we are going to solve some of the big challenges. With the kind of brain power we are putting together over the three days, we will be able to think beyond the day-to-day and approach some big issues with fresh and powerful new thinking.’
The traditional conference dinner has been replaced with three evenings of concerts, with a diverse line up of performers and range of musical styles. And where delegates might expect ‘breakout groups’, de Jong is providing ‘impromptu hot spots’, ‘deep conversations’ and ‘masterclasses’ which, she explains, are designed as opportunities for attendees to engage meaningfully with the speakers.
‘A management consultant, an economist and a soprano walk into a bar. They are greeted by their colleagues in collaborative innovation: a mental health champion, a world class tennis player and the ethicist. A celebrated fashion designer pours the coffee, while a robotics expert and a spiritualist take turns at the white board. A Harvard professor and an Internet entrepreneur tweet the proceedings to the world.’
The start of a joke, or a new way of thinking about business? Perhaps Creative Innovation will reset the bar for business conferences. Find out more at www.creativeinnovation2010.com.au.
How many creative innovators does it take to change a light bulb? The best answer gets a copy of Anders Sorman-Nilsson’s, Thinque Funky. Put your comments here, or email editor@business21c.com.au.
None. All the innovators use eco-friendly future bulbs that they have designed and conceived and marketed. These bulbs are works of art that never fuse, crack or expire.
It takes as little as one creative innovator to make the change so that others no loner have to sit in the dark. The more innovators, the more light!
no need, the design thinkers got there first, and reframed the problem – they put in a couple of skylights
All the creative innovators were deep in philosophical, hystorical and technological thought trying to think of a creative way to solve the need for changing a lightbulb. In the mean time one young innovators wife, fed up with the procrastination, changed it herself.
Don’t reinvent the wheel, it works fine. =-)
Just the one. The one who sees an opportunity in the most banal of situations and then converts it into a ‘now why didn’t I think of that’ comment from the rest of the world.