"Business isn't some disembodied bloodless enterprise. Profit is fine -- a sign that the customer honors the value of what we do. But "enterprise" (a lovely word ) is about heart. About beauty. It's about art. About people throwing themselves on the line. It's about passion and the selfless pursuit of an ideal.
Tom Peters"

Sydney March 7 2008

led by
Linda Naiman, Founder, Creativity At Work, Canada, Global pioneer in the business and arts interface; Ralph Kerle Chief Executive Officer, The Creative Leadership Forum, Australia.

Why Artful Leadership?

The mark of an authentic artful leader in any organization is how the leader is able to continually nurture the creative relationships and conversations between all stakeholders in order to produce successful immediate value and long term viability.

Numbers are traditionally considered the measure for business success. If you don't have the numbers, that's the end of the conversation.

However, it is not the financial and performance targets that produce the outcomes or value. It is the relationships among people, clients, suppliers and their patterns of working and thinking together that produce the outcomes and the value.

An artful leader must know how to lead people creatively!

This international master class presented by global leaders in the area of arts, business and leadership offers executives an introduction to

• a theory of creativity
• the notion of spheres of influence and how an artful leader is able to get things done
• the principles and practices of applied creativity from business, art and science
• artful leadership and a method of reflection that facilitates continual growth

 
Sydney Tuesday October 2 Melbourne Friday October 5 Brisbane, Tuesday October 9 , 2007

Led by
Peter Williams, Director, Deloitte Digital; Ralph Kerle, CEO, The Creative Leadership Forum

Why does the digital community matter to you and your business?

The collaborative world of “Web 2.0” is rapidly scaling corporate walls—and democratising how business works.

It has moved beyond well-known consumer services such as “MySpace” into the commercial world. Innovative digital technologies are enabling customers, employees, managers and business partners to communicate and share information in new ways. It is moving publishing into participation—and consumption into collaboration.

In this new digital community, the roles and skills of leaders are being transformed.

Leaders now need to understand how to use a range of digital media to interact more creatively and effectively. They also need to understand the business opportunities digital communities are creating for businesses to tap into the actions, contacts and talents of people worldwide.

The Creating Your Future in a Digital World Master Class explores these concepts through case study presentations and hands-on technical experience. It will immerse you in practical and applied creativity skills sessions.

The themes and methodologies explored

• a framework for understanding the digital world and its commercial opportunities
• an introduction to the insights and tools required to develop creative leadership abilities in the digital community
• practical experience with working in the new digital world creatively.

June 26 2007 Sydney

Led by

Michael Schrage Co-Director, MIT Media Lab E- Marketing Initiative and MIT Sloan School ; Author "Serious Play" and "Shared Minds" ; Contributor, WIRED, Financial Times and Ralph Kerle, Chief Executive Officer The Creative Leadership Forum, Asia-Pacific

An Overview

This one day international Master Class, designed by Michael Schrage and Ralph Kerle, CEO, the Creative Leadership Forum, exclusively for the Creative Leadership Forum, explores the notion that it is behaviour, not insight or knowledge that drives innovation.

The conventional wisdom is that ideas or ideation produces innovation. Not so argues Schrage!! Ideation only produces representations of ideas. True innovation is experienced in the serious play between the innovator and their audience - their clients, their suppliers, their markets.

To facilitate this serious play, Schrage demonstrates that the development and design of innovative prototypes is vital. It is in the design of these innovative prototypes that innovative teams are created, collaboration skills are honed and a real understanding of innovation with all its inherent challenges is experienced and learnt.

Schrage writes "Any tools, technologies, techniques or toys that let people improve how they play seriously with uncertainty is guaranteed to improve the quality of innovation. The ability to be able to align those improvements cost-effectively with the needs of customers, clients, and markets dramatically boosts the odds for competitive success."

This Master Class will explain the process of innovative prototyping and, through action learning, explore the behaviours that enable organisations to minimize innovation risks whilst creating real financial and economic value.

Topics and methodologies we explored

• How Do We Innovate?
• Innovative Prototyping — Strategic Modeling as a Medium for Cost- Effective Innovation
• Experimenting With Prototypes/Prototyping Experiments
• Experience Serious Play as Innovation.

With

Dr Goran Carstedt President, Volvo Svenka Bll Former Head IKEA Europe Steward, the Society for Organizational Learning (SOL); Dean Harris, Group Managing Director, Synnovate, Asia Pacific; Ralph Kerle, Creative Strategist and CEO, The Creative Leadership Forum, Asia Pacific

Master Class Overview

In two recent global surveys on innovation completed in 2006, IBM's CEO Global Survey entitled "Expanding the Innovation Horizon" and Accenture's "innovation Growth Strategies", the key findings were very similar.

• Business model change is emerging as a vital part of innovation
• Implementation of new business models and the accompany strategies for growth and innovation are often impeded by the lack of collaboration within organizations
• The key strategy for the implementation of innovation is the need to collaborate on as broad a scale as possible and to make this collaboration, systemic and then part of the culture of an organization.

This international master class, led by Dr Goran Carstedt, recognized as a world leader in leadership and innovation, immersed participants in these vital concerns and explored the following questions

• How can you create real change and great results in your organization through innovation
• How can you work creatively individually and collaboratively to do this
• How can you work with your customers creatively to add value and sustainability to the wor
• How can you create a working environment in which you and your associates can have something meaningful and purposeful and become continual learners in the process.

Topics and methodologies explored and discussed

• What is Creative Leadership and How Do We Recognize It?
• Shifting Realities - Creating Energies to Revitalize Organization.
• A Conversation Around Shifting Realities - What Are Your Thoughts.
• The Behaviourial Workings of Personal Decision Making
• Ideas to Innovation to Implementation

With

Dr Kobus Neethling, Executive Director, South African Creativity Foundation; Ralph Kerle, Creative Strategist, Board Member, US Creative Education Foundation; Ken Wall, CEO, the Thinking Network ; Peter Williams, CEO, Deloitte Eclipse Group; Christopher Bell, CEO, the Leadership Consortium

Creativity, innovative problem solving, daring solutions, exciting responses to commercial challenges, is the hallmark of business excellence. This International Master Class explored how to unleash the creative potential of the organisation by delivering a range of practical tools and skills that can be applied successfully at all levels of operation.

The focus of the International Master Class was on building a culture of creativity that underpins thinking, strategy and action at all stages in the cycle of goal setting, product development, process delivery, marketing and customer service.

The topics and methodologies explored

• Mind Gym
• The Cultural Dynamics of Creativity
• Creative Assessment Tools
• Dynamic Innovation Software Systems
• Creative Writing

Download Programme DetailsSydney

Master Class Leaders

Giam Swiegers, CEO Deloittes Australia, Colin Funk, Director, Leadership Leanring Lab, the Banff Centre, Canada; Caroline van den Brul - Director, Creative Networks, BBC, United Kingdom; Kerry Barwise, Director, the Centre for International Economics, Sydney; Peter Williams, CEO the Eclipse Group; Ralph Kerle; CEO, the Creative Leadership Forum; Tess de Quincey, international choreographer

Master Class Theme 

Using the BBC, an acknowledged and current Harvard Business School case study in organizational change programmes, as a real life example, this two day international master class explored a range of creative methodologies, processes and tools that provided the theoretical underpinning and practical application processes used by the BBC in the implementation of their "Making It Happen" creativity change programme.

The methods explored

• Appreciative Inquiry, a creative methodology built on the four principles, discover, dream, design and destiny
• Arts based processes as a way of providing order for complexity and chaos in systems
• the Creative Problems Solving methodology
• The SRI Principles of Innovation.
• Visual Explorer as a creative methodology for generating new strategic visions

The exploration of the methodologies included building a generic and recognizable business scenario around these methodologies that could be defined as a “moment of truth”; a moment in which, for example, employee empowerment, management leadership or customer satisfaction was at stake. We highlighted the shortcomings of conventional, blinkered, or exclusively left-brain thinking. Then by contrasting that with a vision of what is possible with more inclusive, holistic or creative thinking, we invited delegates to emulate the approach and see where it took them.