THINKING CREATIVELY

According to a 2010 IBM-led survey of 1,500 chief executives, CEOs identify “creativity” as the most important leadership competency for the successful enterprise of the future. That’s creativity – not operational effectiveness, influence or even dedication.

Some of us are more left-brained and some are more right.  Yet to be truly innovative, today’s leaders need to utilize their right brain, too. The Innovation Institute at McColl Center for Visual Art helps company’s smartest people use both the logical and creative sides of their brain in tandem to solve problems and think in new, creative ways.

The Innovation Institute is unlike any other executive training for many reasons.  It offers completely custom, highly structured programs designed specifically for each company. But what really sets it apart is that professional artists lead programs, with support from an executive organizational development coach.

Artists may not pass corporate dress codes but they can profoundly affect the way people think, imagine and interact. The biggest threat to an artist’s success is that they be considered imitative. They know better than anyone the importance of thinking differently. Through the Institute’s custom programs, these artists and executive coaches nurture and expand creativity, spark innovation and teach individuals and teams to look at things differently and think in new ways.

Over 1,000 engineers, marketing executives, accountants, physicians, lawyers, nonprofit leaders and more (including corporations like Duke Energy, Wells Fargo, and Ingersoll Rand and institutions like Duke University and UNCC) have taken advantage of the Institute. In a post-recession economy, businesses are searching for new and effective ways to lead, problem-solve, and drive the kind of innovation that will propel an organization forward into the new economy.  Innovation Institute works to restore creativity in corporate environments through smart risk taking and harnessing the imagination.  It explains, “No one ever learned to innovate by talking about it.  It’s all in the doing—risking, revealing, setting aside theories, and never, ever hiding behind the familiar”.

Guest Blogger: Barbara Spradling, Director of the Innovation Institute