BUS477

Michael Luther of IdeAktiv will join us to speak about team-building and creativity in business. His topic is particularly relevant seeing how you are new to your teams and business ideas.

For the past 20 years, Michael has been an Innovation Navigator and Creative Thinking Consultant. That means he coaches business leaders on issues related to creative thinking, systemic creativity and ideas management with businesses and teams.

His clients include Star Alliance, Air Canada, Bayer, GM and Siemens. He has authored and co-authored numerous books and articles about creativity and creative thinking (e.g. "silver-bullet creativity"), designed hands-on thinking tools (e.g. Braincards) and developed creative working formats. He is the originator of CreAcademy, the German creativity conference, and the mastermind of CreaJour, the German internet knowledge portal about creativity and ideation.

On the personal side, he is a restless and passionate guy who constantly likes to dig deeper - to improve and stretch both his comfort zone and his imagination, this while running marathons, freeclimbing, singing in a choir or reading Harry Potter. If you do not meet him at his desk or in a lecture you probably find him refueling his batteries in the outdoors or in wild and sometimes whacky discussions with new "target groups" such as school kids, ad pros, designers, artists, ideas managers or lateral thinkers from all walks of life. Ask him about his inter-cultural experience with an aviation client.

Michel lives in Cologne, Germany and travels the world delivering workshops. He's in love with Vancouver and hopes to move here one day.

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AGENDA OUTLINE

The N & N effect - nature and nurture of creative thinking for business applications

• What the (w)hack is creativity
• 3 gateways to business creativity
• So HOW are you creative
• First step first: How to become a creative mastermind

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SOURCES & RESOURCES

* BOOKS
Michael Michalko: Thinkertoys
Tom Wujec: Five star creativity.
Eduard de Bono: Serious creativity.
Roger von Oech: A whack at the side of the hat.

* ASSOCIATIONS
- CEF (Creative Education Foundation): US-creativity association, founded by Alex Osborn
- ACA: American Creativity Association
- The Eduard de Bono network

* CONFERENCES
- CPSI (Creative problem solving institute): Biggest US-conference on applied creativity and innovation; held annually in the MidWest of the US; www.creativityconference.com
- MINDCAMP: Canadian creativity conference, held annually near Toronto; www.mindcamp.org
- CREA: European creativity conference; held annually in Italy; www.creaconference.com
- Creativity & Innovation Day: More an impulse, annually around the birthday of Leonardo da Vinci; www.creativityday.ca
- and further minor conferences about creativity and innovation, held eg. in Florida, New York - and hopefully soon in Vancouver

* The HALL OF FAME of deliberate creativity (check out their websites, if applicable)
- Genrich Altschuller: TRIZ-methodology
- Min Basadur (Toronto): Simplex System
- Eduard de Bono: Lateral Thinking, 6 Thinking Hats
- Tony Buzan: Mind Mapping
- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: Flow
- Howard Gardner: Multiple intelligence
- William J. Gordon: Synectics methodology
- J.P. Guilford: "Everyone is born creative"
- Georgi Lozanov: Originator of Suggestopedia (Superlearning) a brain-friendly learning methodology based on creative principles
- Roger von Oech: The 4 faces of creativity
- Alex Osborn and Sid Parnes: CPS-strategy, Brainstorming
- Mel Rhodes: 4 P's of creativity
- Roger Sperry: Split brain theory
- Firtz Zwicky: Originator of the Morphological method