Creativity is at a crossroads as a powerful tool for business. An IBM-led study of 3,000 CEOs listed “creativity” as the most important factor that they believed would drive their business success. Never before has creativity been such a valuable, sought after asset in companies across all industries. At the same time, business schools and business have been accused of squashing the creative spirit in individuals.

In fact, ‍reserach by Adobe shows that while 8 in 10 people feel that unlocking creativity is critical to economic growth, only a striking minority – 1 in 4 people – believe they are living up to their own creative potential.

In this course, you will find out why and what you can do to consistently leverage your individual (with and without the help of generative AI) and your team's creative genius in order to solve complex problems and drive change within organizations. 

This course provides training in both the theory and practice of creativity. After the completion of the course students will be able to understand and intentionally leverage creativity at an individual, team, and organizational level.

Individual creativity:

• Demonstrate your creative potential; how to unlock it, express it, foster it.
• Recognize that creativity is a process, not a flash of blinding light.

Team creativity:

• Foster creativity and innovation in others – build a creative (team) culture.
• Explore how creativity can be killed/muzzled intentionally or not.

Organizational creativity:

• Gain experience using creativity tools. 
• Encourage and build organizational creativity.

Students are expected to attend 100% of the scheduled classes (formal records of attendance will be kept). You at least need to be present 80% of the time, which implies that you should not miss more than one session.

The course offers a blend of classic lecturing with special emphasis on in-class discussions, active applications of creative exercises and creativity tools, and student presentations. The course is highly interactive and students are expected to contribute throughout the course.

Grading will be based on the following criteria:

• In-class participation (20%, inspiration)
• Creative exercises (40%, reflection)
• Creativity project (40%, creation)

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Please email me: lukas.maier@wu.ac.at