Thought Leader Panels and Breakout Sessions
Schedule-at-a-Glance
11 Break-out Sessions (A-K - see descriptions below) ~ 3 Thought Leader Panels
9:00-9:15 Welcome/Opening
9:15- 10:30 Choice between Sessions A or B or the Social Media Panel
10:45 - 12:00 Choice between Sessions C, D or E
12:00-1:00 Lunch
1:00-2:00 Think-on-Your-Feet Plenary Session with Michelle James and MIke Bonifer
2:00- 3:15 Choice between Breakout F, G, or H or the Creative Work Cultures Panel
3:30- 4:45 Choice between Breakout I, J or K or the Creative Leadership Panel
5:00-5:30 Creative Ideation and Closing - Whole Group Engagement
5:30-7:30 Festival - Comedy, Food, Networking, Music
There will be an entrepreneur track and an organizational track to choose from during each time slot.
Thought Leader Panels
With Audience Participation
We're having three Thought Leader Panels throughout the day. We've assembled a team of pioneers and leading edge thinkers in the fields of creativity, innovation, leadership and social media who will be exploring Navigating the New Work Paradigm through the lens' of leadership, social media, and creative work cultures. Audience members will be invited to actively particpate in the lively dialogues.
• Creative Leadership Panel
• Social Media Creativity and Innovation Panel
• Creative Culture at Work Panel
Content-rich, Fun, Experiential Breakout Sessions
You'll have a plethora of interactive breakout sessions from which to choose throughout the day. Each will have a different focus around the common theme of Creativity in Business. Sessions range from covering individual creativity to creative work teams and cultures to creative leadership to becoming a creative and innovation organization. Session descriptions:
A. Positive Turbulence: Developing a Climate for Creativity, Innovation and Renewal with Stan Gryskiewicz
Be willing to test the limits - your current safe boundaries were once unfamiliar frontiers. Creativity does not have to be random. Organizational structures can, in fact, be put in place that provide for a core predictable, ongoing occurrence of innovation and renewal. Positive turbulence is a process about setting up those structures through a process that begins with the recognition that change is inevitable, and then uses change, in manageable amounts, to the organization's strategic advantage. Positive Turbulence is necessary in companies. It examines the fast-changing workplace that businesses face. In this session, we will look at how positive turbulence can be turned into a positive force for continuous renewal, and how to skillfully usher positive turbulence into your business or organization.
B. Reclaiming Your Creative Genius for Business Success with Paul Scheele
We cannot expect that studying the past will help us prepare for the emerging future today. Paul Scheele, a successful entrepreneur who has based his career on principles of creativity and human development technologies, will lead participants in a lively, participatory session where he demonstrates how to release more of the true genius within you, accessing greater creativity for personal and organizational breakthrough. Working directly with existing brain structures, holistic intelligences, and simple visioning techniques, participants can quickly solve exceedingly complex problems more creatively. Learn techniques that help you be fully present to “Source,” showing clear steps for immediate application.
C. Holacracy: Organization at the Leading Edge with Brian Robertson
Rarely do organizations live up to their full potential. Even our most progressive approaches to human organization and management are often insufficient for navigating today's complex and rapidly changing world. At the leading edge of organizational design, a new possibility is emerging: a complete organizational operating system called Holacracy. In this session, you will learn this novel approach to structuring and managing an organization pioneered in an award-winning software company that has now become an international movement. Holacracy’s transformative methods integrate the collective wisdom of people throughout the company, while aligning the organization with its broader purpose and a more organic way of operating. The result is dramatically increased agility, transparency, innovation, and accountability.
D. Practical Brilliance: Solution-Discovery Techniques at Work with Dr. Win Wenger
Dr. Win Wenger, one of the world's most prolific thinkers and published authors in the field of creativity and creative problem solving, will introduce you to cutting edge tools and techniques you can use and work and in life, and then you will have the opportunity to put them to work on real issues in real time. You will explore easy-to-learn, easy-to-use whole brain methods for creative discovery leading to new soltuions, accessing deeper levels of creativity, inventiveness and innovation; moving forward in any situation; and using more your natural creative abilities anytime. You will leave with techniques you can use anytime for improving solutions and opportunities, creating new visions and directions, moving through creative blocks and accomplishing your business goals.
E. The Right-Brain Business Plan: A Visual, Out-of-the-Box Approach for Entrepreneurs with Jennifer Lee
Are you an entrepreneur starting or growing a business? Hate the idea of writing a business plan, but know you need one? The Right-Brain Business Plan provides both a playful and highly practical process for turning your passion into profit. Join us for a fun and engaging session to jump start or enhance your business plan. Through a blend of presentation, interactive exercises and group discussion, you will learn creative tools and approaches for crafting your road map to business success.
F. Anatomy of Creative Leadership: Three keys to help you “BE” a more effective Creative Leader w/Russell Schoen
Do you want more creative behavior from your people? More innovative ideas? More bold initiatives? Do you know what is the biggest factor when it comes to observable creative behavior in a work group, team or organization? It’s the attitudes and behaviors of the “leader” of that group. So as a leader, are you modeling the key attitudes and behaviors that support creative behavior over time in yourself and others? And are you willing to take responsibility for the creative climate you create? In this highly interactive session, you will learn a simple, yet powerful framework for modeling creative leadership to foster more creative productivity in yourself and others, and creative tools and practical tips you can start using in your business immediately. Come prepared to challenge yourself, your own assumptions and the way you look at leadership.
G. Creativity from the Core: Transforming Fear and Resistance into Creative Power at Work with Gail Taylor
Unconscious fears impact creative strategizing, problem solving, generative thinking and management structures. As entrepreneurs and leaders, how frequently have you noticed your own or others' fears impair and distort your interactions and creative collaborations? When we learn how to embrace fear and resistance, we can watch them transform into clear focus and profound creative power. In this session, you'll experience a 5-step whole brain process you can apply to yourself, your business and your interactions for increasing productivity, reducing conflict, moving through resistance, and engaging generative collaboration. Learn and experience the "core" skills that create more effective, novel, and satisfying results.
H. Brand Story Mojo to Increase your Brand Value with Michael Margolis
Most leaders today sense something big has to shift. People don't just buy a product or a service - they buy the story that is attached to it. The same truth applies for any idea you're trying to socialize into reality. Brand Story Mojo teaches you how to shift people into a new story especially when the stakes are high and you need to raise a lot of money, legitimize what you do, or shift existing perceptions. In this session, you will learn how Brand Storytelling is a powerful tool for visionary leaders, why the Brand Story can reshape organizational mood, three pillars that can anchor your Brand Story, how to find the bigger story worth telling and the hidden assets that drive brand value. Brand value creates stand-out differentiation, price premium, loyal customers, engaged employees, and gives people a story to talk about.
I. Improv Principles and Practices in Business for Breakthrough Performance with Mike Bonifer
Neuroscientists and behavioral psychologists have discovered that the biggest obstacle to achieving our full potential is the unconscious mind. Once accessed, we can create new and productive avenues for our conscious behaviors, gain confidence to confront our fears and liberate our untapped creative abilities. This session offers fresh and relevant perspectives on business communication in the networked era, and insights on how to achieve creative breakthroughs via collaboration. Mike Bonifer, author of GameChangers--Improvisation for Business in the Networked World, will lead participants through improv-based practices to communicate meaningfully, collaborate creatively, adapt to changing economic environments, and achieve breakthrough levels of business performance. Play has never been so productive!
J. Zoka's Five Creative Habits for Innovation, Collaboration and a Creative Work Culture with Larry Blumsack
Innovation is the big business buzz word for survival in the global economy. And visionary leaders know that you can't have innovation without creativity. They also know that you can't manage creativity - that you have to manage for creativity. Arts-based business training is the pathway to a creative company culture. Zoka's Five Habits spark critical thinking, creative problem solving and collaboration for businesses innovation. In this experiential workshop participants will learn how the Senses make Cents. Experience using whole-brain thinking with the five senses to ignite imaginative, facile and creative thinking. Learn how creativity and mindfulness combine to build innovative, successful and ethical organizations.
K. Using the Whole Brain for a Compelling Elevator Speech with Ira Koretsky
If you were in a room full of 100 decision makers, could you deliver an inspiring and compelling 30-second story? Are you telling the right story? Is it generating the results you want? At business functions, most conversations begin with “Hello, my name is _____. What do you do?” The answer is the typical, boring blah-blah-blah talk. As humans, we crave connection. The best way to connect is to tell a story. Great stories stir our emotions. They transform facts into ideas and ideas into action. Follow a proven, creative, and results-driven approach to tell YOUR story in 30 seconds or less. Join us for a fun, practical, and hands-on session to develop your business storytelling skills. Topics include: Getting the business date, The power of metaphors, It’s all about them, Avoid the blah-blah-blah, and Convert jargon to people-speak.
Creativity in Business Conference 2009
