Creativity in Business “Imagination is more important than knowledge. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination.� Albert Einstein
The development of the market in creative training Sue Sandle
www.artsandbusiness.org.uk
Contents Introduction
3
Background
4
Defining creativity
5
The development of the creative training agenda
7
The role of Arts & Business
9
Demand & supply
100
Impact on business
111
Theory vs. practice
144
Experts vs. interested
155
Theorists
Page 2
17
Researchers
199
Practitioners
200
Trainers
211
Appendix
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The development of the market in creative training
Introduction Arts & Business has been offering creative training using the arts to business for well over four years now. The context in which we are offering this service has changed substantially over that time. An increasing number of trainers and providers have entered the market and the range of environments in which business come into contact with this form of business development has broadened. This has included a gradual increase in the number of business schools and other academic institutions that include some kind of creative training in their MBA and executive programmes. This latter in particular has added an interesting dynamic to the market as it introduces potential business leaders to this powerful tool in an environment in which they are disposed to give it serious consideration. Now that Arts & Business’s own delivery is well established we felt we should undertake a mapping exercise as a way of reviewing current activity and seeing if the work within the academic context has affected the overall market. The arts@work directory (produced over 3 years ago) gave an overview of the delivery of arts-based training and enabled us to talk with authority about the arena and the opportunities available. This report aims to provide an updated and broader background to the market. It covers the following areas:How has the business context developed? What is ‘creativity’ within a business context? What do the arts bring to this agenda? How did the creative training agenda develop? The role of Arts & Business within the creative training market The dynamics of demand and supply for creative training The supply map The implications for Arts & Business In addition to the report there is a literature review featuring a wide range of titles linked to the ‘creativity in business’ debate.
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Background We exist in an era in which information is of overriding importance in the business world. The pace of change has quickened dramatically during the last ten years. The explosion in both the sophistication and spread of technological developments since the 1960’s has pushed us very quickly into an era in which information is king. “On an average weekday the New York Times contains more information that any contemporary of Shakespeare’s would have acquired in a lifetime.” Anon “Information production grows at 50% a year…. Yet the amount of time people spend
consuming is growing by only 1.7% a year. Supply and demand bear no relation to one another.” The Social Life of Information Seely Brown & Duguid Companies now have to function in a global context in which, because of the speed and accuracy with which information can be passed around the globe, one of the key drivers of success is what a corporation does with the information that it gathers. As it is people who create value out of information it is therefore people who have become the most important resource within business. The consequence of this shift in focus from machines to man is an increasing concentration on the manner in which people do their jobs rather than just the jobs that they do. And it is this focus that is a major factor in the current corporate obsession with “creativity”. “Access to talented and creative people is to modern business what access to coal and iron ore was to steelmaking.” The Rise of the Creative Class, Richard Florida
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Defining creativity Creativity is something which many people believe is a vital ingredient in achieving excellence in a wide variety of fields and yet it is a very loose concept which is difficult to explain. The definition can also vary widely depending upon the context in which it is used. Creativity is nearly always associated with inspiration and a starting definition is:The generation of novel ideas without too much regard for their usefulness This is a perfectly acceptable definition within the artistic realm but the focus on inputs rather than outputs makes it less useful within a business context. There are other definitions that are more relevant to business because they take this notion of creative outputs into account. Alan Robinson and Howard Stern in their book Corporate Creativity say: “a company is creative when its employees do something new and potentially useful without being directly shown or taught.” This definition underlines the need for creativity to be appropriate as well as different. Ideas (creativity) need to be suitable for transformation into successful action (innovation) in order to be relevant in a business context. Charles Davis, Development Director at Psion Computers sums up this vision of creativity as: “Doing something that hasn’t been done before, it involves conception + invention +
exploitation.” This is a very process driven definition and as such is a useful distillation of what creativity means to many businesses. A large number of the current books on business creativity, be they around organisational structure, collaboration, teamwork or strategy development are built around definitions similar to the one above. They attempt to define series of processes and techniques that encourage this chain reaction and that bring about the tangible results, vital to success, of improvements (changes to what is already done within the company) and innovations (entirely new activities for the company).
What do the arts bring to this agenda? This leaning within business towards the process of creativity is understandable as processes can be replicated. However processes can also lack a crucial ingredient, namely inspiration, and this is where the dialogue between arts and business often begins. A gradually increasing number of businesses have begun to understand how essential
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inspiration is to creative development and to recognise that the arts are uniquely placed to help them to tap into it. After all, the key currency of the arts is inspiration, inspiration of thought, emotion and action and although having a creative process is potentially useful, without inspiration it is unlikely to bear much fruit. The arts sector has other, equally important, lessons to share with business. As companies become increasingly reliant on their people to give them a competitive edge they need them to be increasingly committed, motivated and resourceful. These attributes are all becoming more and more difficult to foster in the present job climate. However they are attributes that the arts sector enjoys in abundance and consequently they provide another area of expertise that they can share with the corporate world. “Being creative is seeing the same thing as everybody else but thinking of something
different.�
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The development of the creative training agenda The nature of the exchange between commerce and culture is a matter that has long been debated and the kind of direct exchange of knowledge and skills of which we are currently at the forefront is just the latest in years of overlapping theories and practices and connections between different domains. There now exists a continuum of artistic interventions in business that range from those that make few demands on employees such as a corporate art collections to full blown creative training that requires their total engagement. John Knell’s current research will go into this range of relationships in more detail, this report focuses on the latter end of the continuum, on interventions in which artists use skills and techniques from their particular artistic background to address business issues in original and compelling ways. The development of this creative training agenda has echoed the gradual shift in business culture over the last 30 years.
Role-play It is fairly safe to argue that the first experience that the corporate world had of the impact of the arts on their day-to-day business was through role-play. Role-play (working with actors to simulate work situations and to then practice different behaviours within them) suited the process–driven nature of British industry during the 70’s and 80’s. It was an effective way of imparting information to workers and of augmenting straightforward types of training such as health and safety and line management. Role-play does not require the high levels of engagement demanded by full-blown creative training and is therefore a relatively low risk training strategy. It has been a constant, albeit much maligned, presence in business training for many years and as such it undoubtedly provided a stepping stone for the more effective and broader based work that is now going on.
Total participation events The next development was the growth of large-scale ‘total participation’ events that emerged alongside the shift from production to service industries. With this shift came a need to cultivate shared corporate objectives and culture amongst groups of people who were no longer producing tangible products, but who were working independently with different clients over different time frames and who consequently had few opportunities or reasons to foster team spirit. Companies such as Lively Arts, founded in 1995, pioneered the idea of epic Page 7
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productions in which participants are involved in any aspect of the creation. These events are often for huge numbers of people and their sheer size means that their development focus tends to be limited to team building and improving communications.
Issue-based creative training These types of interaction and the growing focus on the individual skills within business, (as previously discussed) laid the way for the gradual encroachment of the arts into the whole field of business development. Role-play planted the idea that artists, in this case actors, had skills that were of direct relevance to business. Total participation events expanded this idea so businesses began to consider the wider implications of the overlap between the skills that that arts had in abundance e.g. superlative teamwork, communication, adaptability, flexibility and passion and the skills that they needed in the new business context. The initial route into business was often based around training needs such as personal impact and presentation skills, training needs in which the expertise of the arts were obvious. The success and repetition of these interventions led to a greater understanding within both arts and business of the range of issues that the arts could be used to address and these now include long-term strategic planning, improving global communications, dealing with merger issues and so on.
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The role of Arts & Business Arts & Business began to develop its own creative training offer nearly five years ago in 1998. Our discussions with business members revealed their need for new and inspiring ways to develop and motivate their staff. We also appreciated the training skills that already existed within the arts sector, developed during many years of education work. We were consequently able to use our unique position as a conduit between business and the arts to investigate and help to develop the market. In 1999 we pulled together the first arts@work directory as a way of appraising the breadth of arts-based training provision. The first edition of the directory contained details of fewer than 50 artists and arts companies that worked with business. The majority of them provided creative training as a sideline to their artistic endeavours and viewed it as a potentially fruitful income stream to fund their ‘real’ work. In 2000 the directory was updated. The second edition contained over 150 entries and it was by no means a definitive list. There was a substantial increase in the number of companies or individuals whose sole purpose was to work with business. This was an impressive development over the period of just 2 years that was driven both by market factors and by Arts & Business’s involvement in the field. In the business sector we helped to stimulate demand by: Raising business awareness of the depth and range or work Advocating the benefits and strengths of this type of arts/business partnership In the arts sector we helped to broaden and strengthen the supply base by: Raising awareness of the links between business needs and the work that they were already doing Providing experience by working with an increasing pool of suppliers on Arts & Business generated projects At the moment the creative training team within Arts & Business has a strong focus on supply. The team has remained small and therefore has less time available to encourage other providers, to provide training for artists and to promote arts-based training in general rather than selling our own services. We now provide high quality arts interventions to business on a wide range of corporate issues and some other arts-based training providers view us as direct competition rather than facilitators. John Knell’s research will go into more detail on this matter and the implications that it has on both the market and the perception of Arts & Business within it.
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Demand & supply Whilst investigating the changes in the supply of creative training and its encroachment into the academic context a clear demand dynamic emerged. This is worth discussing at some length as it has implications for the future of the market.
Demand The greatest strength of artistic interventions in a business context is the impact that they have on a personal level. Although business objectives can be based on changing a group’s behaviour, for example, improving communication or the way a team works together, the motivation for change is most likely to come through an individual’s experience of the training. It is very difficult not to engage when working with the arts since they are participatory, they are demanding and they are intrusive. This means that the impact as well as being deep can also resonate long after the event was experienced.
Advocates The other side of this coin is that this kind of work doesn’t suit everyone. The level of engagement and openness required to learn from the arts is difficult for some and consequently can lead to a polarisation of opinion. People tend to love or hate artistic interventions, they very rarely feel neutral about them. This strength of feeling is key to the development of demand because it results in the creation of two camps – the converted and the unconverted. The converted are an absolutely essential tool in the demand chain. An advocate within business has ten times the power of anyone outside, however lofty their artistic credentials. The obverse of this is that shifting the opinions of the unconverted is almost impossible and their influence can spread just as wide and deep in a business as that of the advocates.
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Impact on business Learning & development Demand within business is initially driven by this impact on the individual. Companies that take the plunge into creative training often start with relatively low-risk (and personal rather than team) development areas such as presentation skills and personal impact (see box 1 in diagram 1). Success in these areas can lead to an increasing number of advocates within the business. This weight of support can gradually persuade the company (arrow 2) to experiment with broader ranging, corporate development objectives, often with a team focus and therefore with a higher risk as regards impact and success (box 3). Examples of these might include addressing communications or strategic planning issues.
Initial demand for arts-based training
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This shift between low-risk, individual training requirements towards higher-risk, corporate development objectives is interesting. Although there is clearly an understanding within these companies that the arts can help to address broader objectives they are still being used to address specific learning and development issues. They are discrete experiences with discrete objectives and artistic collaboration is viewed as a tool with which to address these particular issues.
Ideas in Action It is at this point that the demand dynamic usually settles, oscillating between individual and corporate development objectives (arrow 4), because the shift into the next stage of demand is a big one. This step is into an arena where artistic collaboration becomes the norm and the creativity inspired by these relationships becomes part of the corporate culture. Artistic interventions are still used to address particular issues but there is also an acceptance of the usefulness of creative inspiration and collaboration on a day-to-day basis (box 5, diagram 2). Artists-in-residence, actively managed art collections, ready availability of artists for project work are all signs of this kind of relationship with the arts and artists. There is a shift away from pure learning and development needs towards ideas in action. This kind of commitment to the creative brief requires a critical mass of support from the rank and file and this is very unlikely to develop without solid backing from the top of the company hierarchy (arrow 6). It is a huge commitment to “walk the talk” at this kind of level and hence the companies that have taken the plunge are few and far between. Our key example is Project Catalyst at Unilever, an in-depth study of which is currently underway. It is also worth noting that a deeper possible result of such work is to call in to question the basic assumptions on which a company functions e.g. the sustainability of the profit motive, or the purpose of personnel and HR functions. These deeper strategic issues should be of interest to the leaders of an organisation, but there is no obvious format for their discussion let alone for their integration into business practice. Consequently these ‘big’ issues are avoided whilst attempts are made to ‘fix’ things around them.
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Full demand dynamic
An additional (and interesting) impact that creative training can have on the business environment is in inspiring individuals to leave. Like other forms of very effective coaching it can help people to clarify their value systems and their ambitions. In this way it can augment other influences to give people the confidence and impetus to change jobs or move into very different fields. This model illustrates the various barriers that creative training faces in its bid to become accepted as an essential addition to business life. It should be particularly useful in helping to establish the future role of Arts & Business within this arena.
Supply dynamic In order to map the various modes of supply of creative training it was necessary to establish a framework. This emerged relatively easily and it reflects some aspects of the demand dynamic in that it helps to clarify the diverse levels of engagement and commitment within the supply field.
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Theory vs. practice A key differentiator between the ‘suppliers’ is their level of commitment to artistic practice vs. theory i.e. between their commitment to communicating the relevance of the arts in a business context by full engagement and in using the arts as an interesting metaphor for the discussion of various business issues. The suppliers with whom we are most familiar are those from the arts@work directory who immerse participants in an artistic context and who then use the consequent experiences as a way of drawing out learnings that are relevant to the business lives of the participants. Practice - immersion. Less familiar to us are the organisations at the other end of this continuum who are interested in the theoretical side of the debate – in the techniques, skills etc. that are used within the arts and that can be ‘applied’ within business. Amongst this second group the interchange between business and the arts is more often seen as one of practical, replicable skills (e.g. presentation and personal impact skills) or as a way of illustrating business issues with interesting analogies, e.g. working with a jazz quintet to illustrate modes of teamwork . Theory - investigation.
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Experts vs. interested The second axis was more difficult to decide upon as I needed to identify something that would ‘pull apart’ the various supply modes to the greatest degree. I have settled upon their relative focus on the arts. This allows a distinction to be made between the ‘experts’ – those groups with a clear or total focus on the arts and the ‘interested’ – those groups or institutions whose focus is elsewhere and who are intrigued by the ways that the arts can be relevant to their areas of work. The resulting framework allows us to map organisations with respect to their academic and artistic credentials. The arrow in the above diagram illustrates that fact that the majority of the ‘interested’ actually use the ‘experts’ from the artistic sector to fulfill their needs, so they are conduits through which creative training can be experienced rather than true suppliers themselves.
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The map I have selected just a few organisations to illustrate these different areas of supply. The model should be robust enough to be added to as necessary and should prove a useful tool alongside the demand dynamic in considering the future role of Arts & Business within this arena. The appendix has a brief descriptor of each of the organisations featured on the map and giving their web address should further information be required.
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Theorists The majority of MBA and executive programmes that have any kind of interaction with the arts engage at a low level. The examples I have used sit in the bottom left of the table (quadrant 1). These institutions work with outside providers to illustrate very specific areas of their syllabus, usually focusing on soft skills such as leadership or team building. Although the sessions themselves are usually participatory in some way the context in which they sit is so resolutely academic that the take-out is often given a theoretical bent, without which it would probably be viewed as irrelevant. These experiences therefore act more as demonstrations of the possibilities of arts/business interactions rather than as high-impact development sessions in and of themselves. On the other hand their importance should not be underestimated because, if we go back to the demand dynamic, they do act as primers for potential conversion of future leaders of business, those advocates essential for growth of the market.
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There are some MBA providers who work with the arts at a deeper level and who use them to address a wider range of issues. A good example is Cranfield School of Management, which has established the Praxis Centre, a unique facility amongst business schools in the UK in that it is a ‘centre of expertise’ that focuses on the soft skills of management development and uses a variety of innovative approaches to spark participants’ imaginations. They work exclusively with artists on issues around leadership, presentation and influencing skills and have very strong links with the Globe Theatre and its leadership programme. IMD Lausanne also works with a range of artists to augment their executive and open programmes. Interestingly a lot of the artists with whom they work are from the UK, illustrating the lack of provision in Europe at the moment.
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Researchers The top left quadrant of the map (quadrant 2) includes organisations that focus on the research of the whole arts and business arena. The Creative Alliance Consortium is the prime example of this. The Creative Alliance is part of the Learning Lab Denmark. LLD has some echoes of Demos in the UK in that it is a practice-oriented research organisation that focuses on learning, competence development and knowledge creation for individuals, organisations, and society in general. The aim of the Creative Alliance within LLD is to investigate the learning potential of the interface between business and the arts and to foster a clear understanding of the how the arts can contribute to organisational change and competitive advantage. They are doing this through research based studies and experiments the results of which they will disseminate as widely as possible. Also included in this quadrant is the American Creativity Association, this is a global network of creative professionals from business, industry, education and the arts. The ACA is a primary resource for learning and applying creativity, innovation, problem-solving, and ideation theory, tools, and techniques. ACA's collective expertise provides a wide range of problem-solving methods, from simple idea-capture techniques to complex problem-solving methodologies. They also run an annual conference bringing together these different sectors and act as a forum for discussion and dissemination of ideas and best practice. Their position in the map is therefore more central as they are not focused wholly on the arts and they are interested in the practice as well as the theory of creativity in business. They are included because of the initial connections that they could provide in the vast North American market.
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Practitioners The top left quandrant of the map (quandrant 3) is the arena with which we are most familiar. It contains those organisations that use their artistic skills and credentials to work with business to develop solutions to a very broad range of business issues. The majority of groups featured in the arts@work directory and Arts & Business itself sit in the far top right of this quadrant. These organisations are run by the real arts experts who are able to use their artistic backgrounds to create experiences that have a deep impact and resonance within a business context. There are an increasing number of organisations and individuals that sit closer to the middle of this quadrant. These companies still have a strong arts focus but they also have a wider mix of skills internally, key staff have often worked in business for considerable periods. The results in them presenting themselves on a more equal footing (or just more familiar) with business as consultants rather than facilitators. There are two interesting organisations included in this quadrant. The first is the Banff Centre. The Banff Centre is Canada’s only learning centre dedicated to the arts, leadership development and mountain culture. This seems a strange mixture until one appreciates the location of the centre 4,540 feet above sea level in the heart of the Canadian Rockies. The centre serves the needs of accomplished artists (its original audience), business and community leaders and members of the global mountain community through year round programmes designed to enrich professional practice beyond the realm of traditional education. I have included it here because of its size and the fact that its ethos of mixing arts and business chimes very well with that of Arts & Business. The second interesting organisation is Kaos Pilots. Kaos Pilots is a three year educational programme in entrepreneurship and leadership focusing on the professional spheres of creativity, innovation and intercultural understanding – an alternative MBA if you like. KaosPilots is fascinating because of its cultural focus and its ambition to “motivate and stimulate the students' creative energy and desire to implement ideas. Our hope is that each individual student will develop an entrepreneurial lifestyle, marked by a sense of social responsibility, a democratic disposition and a non-prejudiced, tolerant view of the world and its population.” A far cry from the ambitions of all the old school MBA providers and potentially a very useful partner in the battle to convince these latter that the arts and culture could play a far greater part in the development of their students. (For a detailed description of its inception and development see their website at www.kaospilots.dk)
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Trainers The final quadrant (quadrant 4) is the least interesting from a development point of view in that it contains the organisations who are closest to being standard training providers. These companies offer artistic interventions as an option within a range of straightforward business training and consultancy services. They are potentially useful as ‘connectors’ giving the arts experts access to businesses by using them in their training programmes. However the nature of their offering tends to dilute the impact of the artistic interventions and they are consequently not optimum partners for expansion of the market.
The implications for Arts & Business This report provides some background to the current creative training market, how it has developed over the past five years and how the dynamics of demand and supply have shifted over that same time period. It also touches upon the current role of Arts & Business within this arena. The report has been written as a companion piece to John Knell’s up-coming and indepth research into this same area. Given that his research will provide additional and illuminating information it would be inappropriate at this juncture to come up with conclusions as to the best way forward for Arts & Business. Instead I want to highlight a couple of the questions that have been thrown up by this report and that I think are key to the debate. Should Arts & Business focus on developing the market as a whole rather than developing our role as an expert supplier within in it? In other words should Arts & Business act as a facilitator rather than provider? How can businesses be encouraged to leap across the great divide between using the arts as just one aspect of the their training and development programmes to accepting the arts as an essential and powerful business tool on a day-to-day business? These are the central issues that need to be considered during any discussions about the future of the creative training market and about the role of Arts & Business within it. I hope that this report will prove to be a useful tool during these discussions and that it has thrown light upon some of the issues involved. Sue Sandle Arts & Business January 2004
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Appendix – Organisations featured in the supply map Theorists Ashridge Business School Arts & Business runs a half day session on “creativity” at the beginning of every MBA programme at Ashridge. www.ashridge.org.uk
ESSEC, Paris Work with actors in their MBA programmes to highlight issues around behavioural impact and to help participants to improve their communication skills. www.essec.fr
Center for Creative Leadership CCL is a learning institution that focuses entirely on leadership. They are a resource for understanding and expanding the leadership capabilities of individuals and organizations from across the public, private, nonprofit, government and education sectors. In spite of their name they have limited interactions with the artistic sector. www.ccl.org
Smurfit Graduate School of Business, Dublin The MBA programme includes a section called ‘Authentic Voice’ with workshops run by actors encouraging participants to identify and express their value system and career aspirations. www.ucdbusiness.ucd.ie
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Stern School of Business, NYU, New York Professor of Management & Organisational behaviour works with the Met Opera using them as an excellent case study in organizational complexity. www.stern.nyu.edu
Cranfield School of Management The Praxis Centre at Cranfield is a unique facility amongst business schools in the UK in that it is an established ‘centre of expertise’ that focuses on the ‘soft skills’ of management development. The Praxis Centre takes an holistic approach encouraging ethical, sustainable leadership and using a variety of innovative approach to fire the imagination and stimulate new thinking. They work exclusively with artists on issues around leadership, presentation and influencing skills. www.som.cranfield.ac.uk
IMD International, Lausanne IMD work with artists (a number of them from the UK including Richard Hahlo, Geoff Church, and Doug Manuel ) to add depth to their MBA and executive programmes. Personal impact, presentation skills and teamwork are just some of the issues tackled. They also employ a local symphony orchestra and jazz quintet to highlight issues during courses focusing on organizational and corporate leadership issues. www.imd.ch
London Business School Use artistic invention and the theatrical ensemble as models for creative processes on their core leadership programme. Also use the arts to highlight various issues throughout their full-time MBA programme. www.london.edu
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Templeton College, Oxford University Templeton’s customised leadership programme interweaves sessions on the paradoxes of leadership, the leadership of transformational change and leading across different cultures with inputs from the humanities and the performing arts, including the actors Neil Mullarkey on ‘Improvisation’, Richard Olivier on Inspirational Leadership in Henry V, and Peter Hanke of Contemporary Choral Music www.templeton.ox.ac.uk
Universiteit Nyenrode, Holland The Netherlands Bsuiness School integrates dramatic art into many of its non-degree management development programmes. Marijke Broekhuijsen, director of Nyenrode’s senior management programmes has herself a background in theatre as well as business. www.nijenrode.nl
Researchers The Creative Alliance Consortium The Creative Alliance is part of Learning Lab Denmark. Their aim is to investigate the learning potential of the interface between business and the arts and to foster a clear understanding of the how the arts can contribute to organizational change and competitive advantage. Through research based studies and experiments, The Creative Alliance aims to build a "learningbridge" between the all-to-often separated worlds of art and business - a bridge that will enable knowledge and competence selection and diffusion. The bridge should make it possible to explore new creative alliances, and experiment with new creative collaborations between artists and companies. www.lld.dk/consortia/thecreativealliance (Learning Lab Denmark is a practice-oriented research organisation that focuses on learning, competence development and knowledge creation for individuals, organisations, and society in general - www.lld.dk)
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American Creativity Association For more than a decade, the American Creativity Association has been a primary resource for learning and applying creativity, innovation, problem-solving, and ideation theory, tools, and techniques. ACA offers a global network of creative professionals in disciplines ranging from business and industry to education and the arts. ACA's collective expertise provides a wide range of problem-solving methods, from simple idea-capture techniques to complex problemsolving methodologies. Members enjoy and benefit from personal interaction with top experts in the fields of creativity and innovation worldwide. Their annual conference, “THINK TANK 2004 - Recreating Creativity�, is in April 2004 in Houston, Texas. Themes are Creativity in a Flat Economy, Creative Entrepreneurship, Creativity in Classrooms and Bottom-line Creativity www.amcreativityassoc.org
The Edge Foundation The Edge Foundation, Inc., was established in 1988 as an outgrowth of a group known as The Reality Club. Its informal membership includes of some of the most interesting minds in the world. The mandate of Edge Foundation is to promote inquiry into and discussion of intellectual, philosophical, artistic, and literary issues, as well as to work for the intellectual and social achievement of society. www.edge.org
Practitioners Creative Leaps Creative Leaps are learning specialists, performing artists, scientists and renewal partners working in the corporate and educational arenas. Their clients include leading Fortune 500 companies, centers for leadership and professional development, research institutions, Federal agencies, colleges and universities, and centers for teacher training and renewal. Creative Leaps use the performing arts within highly integrated learning environments, for example opening events and keynote presentations with the Concerts of Ideas. Concerts of Ideas may be described as a fusion of lively performing arts with imaginative, crossdisciplinary stimulation for the intellect - as well as the heart and soul. www.creativeleaps.org
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Creativity at Work Linda Naiman is founder of Creativity at Work, a Vancouver, B.C. consulting and training group who work with organizations to awaken genius level thinking through the art and science of applying creativity, innovation, and visionary thinking to business strategy. Their approach is multi-disciplinary and they collaborate with experts from across North America and Europe to provide clients with world-class resources. They work with business and public sector organizations. Services include arts-based training and facilitation focused on collaborative leadership, teamwork, creativity, and innovation; new product/services development; and global estorming. www.creativityatwork
The Creativity Centre Ltd The Creativity Centre is an an independent UK company that works with large and small organisations in the public and private sectors, offering research and consultancy services in the areas of creativity, innovation and enterprise. They are particularly aware of the valuable contributions people from many different cultural groups and countries make to the understanding and practice of creativity, innovation and enterprise. Yet their views are not as widely available as they need to be. Hence they chose Creativity and Cultural Diversity as the theme for a recent international conference. www.creativitycentre.com
The Banff Centre The Banff Centre is Canada's only learning centre dedicated to the arts, leadership development, and mountain culture. It serve the needs of accomplished artists, business and community leaders, and members of the global mountain community through year-round programs designed to enrich professional practice beyond the realm of traditional education. The Art of Executive Leadership programme is designed as an experiential, interactive retreat that takes participants from artist’s studios to a mountaintop to a theatre stage and brings them into discussion with everyone from musicians and theatre producers to tribal elders and mountain expedition leaders. www.banffcentre.ca
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The KaosPilots The KaosPilots is a modern, value-based and internationally oriented program, focussing on entrepreneurship and leadership. From being a visionary, far-sighted - but possibly airy educational concept, hatched and developed by a small group drawn from the cultural grass roots of Aarhus (who preferred techno raves to golf), the school has developed into what it is today: a serious and renowned player on the stage of international education. On the one hand.....The KaosPilots is a three year educational program in entrepreneurship and leadership, focussing on the professional spheres of creativity, innovation and intercultural understanding…. On the other hand......The KaosPilots is a playful, curious, challenging, fun and sometimes noisy educational environment where participants are expected to make a contribution to the creation of a unique learning space, and to help investigate and understand modern entrepreneurship and leadership www.kaospilot.dk
Trainers Bridge Builders BridgeBuilders draw together expertise from learning and communication, theatre and performance and organisational development. They provide programmes to ignite and excite team working, creativity and imagination, high impact communications, leadership and action learning. (A regular provider of training to Arts & Business) www.bridgebuilders.co.uk
CVN CVN is a company (possibly defunct now, no web-evidence) which supplies the management ‘hub’ for the building of better tw-way communication and collaborative learning projects between the arts, science, technology and education communities. Its mission is to give new impetus to the creative processes of innovation and ideas generation by stimulating more inclusive and sustainable interactions and dialogue across these fields.
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