Creativity and Innovation Week
  April 15 is more than “tax day.”  It also marks the 556th birthday of Leonard da Vinci and begins Creativity and Innovation Week, according to the Center for Creative Solutions located in La Porte County. 

Creativity and Innovation Week is a celebration of the unlimited creative potential in all of us.  It reminds us that everyone has the ability to find new solutions to old problems, create new opportunities,
and breakdown barriers resulting in more choices.

International Creativity and Innovation Week runs April 15 - 21, 2009. Over a hundred communities in 46 countries around the world observe the week. Communities, businesses, organizations and individuals
celebrate with a wide-range of activities.  In one business, for example, the team of employees generating the most creative ideas to solve problems will win prizes.  Some school children will be talking about inventors.

Other community groups are offering workshops on various aspects of creativity.  Topics include: how all  people can enhance their creativity; how mistakes can lead to break-throughs; the work environments that
motivate people; and how businesses and non-profit organizations can use Creative Problem Solving to generate new ideas to keep them competitive.

During the week, much of the focus will be on da Vinci, a renown painter, inventor, mathematician, philosopher, conservationist, engineer and visionary.  He experimented, looked at things in different ways, and applied what he learned in one discipline to another.  Even though da Vinci was born 556 years ago, people still marvel at his work and study his creative strategies.

“We are all creative in varying degrees and different ways.  People channel their creativity every day of their lives as they find solutions to their problems.  Creativity manifests itself in every area: science, business, architecture,
education, social work, parenting, medicine, and the fine arts, to name just a few,” said Cynthia Hedge, CEO of the Center for Creative Solutions.

“Our economy is now global.  Many of our traditional industries have been re-planted in developing countries, such as China and India.  One way we can compete in this economy is through creativity and innovation,
areas in which Americans have long excelled,” Hedge continued.

To learn more about creativity and change leadership, contact the Center for Creative Solutions at 219-861-0955.

The Center is a non-profit organization dedicated “to helping people find creative solutions to their personal,
professional, business, organizational and community challenges.”

The Center for Creative Solutions offers an array of services to individuals and organizations of all kinds. Through its creative problem solving program, clients explore their challenges, generate promising ideas,
selectand strengthen solutions and develop a plan of action.

The Center for Creative Solutions offers creative problem solving and strategic planning facilitation for businesses, government and non-profits.  Its trainings cover many topics: leadership; creativity in the
workplace; conflict resolution; managing change; developing mission and vision statements; effective communication, fund raising; team building; running effective meetings; workplace etiquette; decision making; and ethics and values.  The Center has also helped organizations with studies,
surveys and evaluations.

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For more information, please contact Hedge at the Center for Creative Solutions at
 219-861-0955. 

Creativity and Innovation: 
The key to America’s economic leadership

Fiber-optic plants will be used in gardens.   Twenty-five percent of all celebrities will be synthetic.  Robots will be able to build houses and do almost any job in hospitals and homes.  Vacationers can enjoy space tours.  People will wear clothes that collect and store solar power which can recharge
their cell phones and iPods.  Artificial hearts, lungs and kidneys will be transplanted into humans.  Sound like ideas that are far away?  Not so, according to a panel of futurists assembled by Forecasting International, a consulting firm.  Last month, the experts predicted the use of these technologies,
and many others, within the next eight years.  Their forecasts for the next 25 years seem even more astonishing.

To understand how quickly our world is changing, we need to look at “product cycle.” This is the time from which a breatkthrough idea is formed, a prototype is invented, innovation produces a consumer product, and cheap competitors flood the market with imitations.  In the early 1900's, the cycle was 40 years.  By World War II, the cycle was reduced to 30 years.  Today, it is about six months.

So, how can the United States maintain its economic leadership in the mist of such rapid change?  How can it compete with emerging economies such as China and India where many American industries have moved?  What kind of leaders will help us succeed?

The answer lies in Americans’ ability to create faster and better than other peoples.  Fortunately, our country has a solid track for creativity and innovation.  The list of Nobel Prize winners– so many of them
Americans-- proves the point.  Some of the most creative Americans are icons: Thomas Jefferson, Bill Gates, Harriet Tubman, Thomas Edison, George Gershwin, Susan B. Anthony, George Washington Carver, Henry Ford, Martha Graham, and Benjamin Franklin, to name just a few.

There is more good news: creativity is happening in the United States every day, every where.  Moreover, everyone– yes, you– is creative all the time!   Parents are using creativity to raise children.  Businesses are developing new products and business practices.  Teachers are applying innovative ways to educate students.  Courts are designing new programs to rehabilitate criminals.  Scientists are experimenting with new theories and formulas that may lead to miracle drugs and breakthrough echnologies.
Social services are breaking ground with new human services.

While you may think you are not one of these creative types, think about how many problems you solve in one day.  Your creativity is unique to you.  Research shows that some people are more creative than anothers– yet everyone is creative. 

Furthermore, individuals approach creativity differently.  Some people build on existing ideas.  As the Wright Brothers developed their airplane, for instance, they incorporated ideas of Octave Chanute who conducted aviation
experiments on the Northwest Indiana Dunes.  On the other hand, some people come up with totally novel ideas that seem radical or controversial at first.  Frank Lloyd Wright’s “prairie style” architecture or Albert Eienstein’s  theory of relativity is an example of this kind of creativity.

The areas in which people are most creative is different as well.  Some people express their creativity on the piano, others on the baseball field or on a community project.  In every area of life, people, like you, are being creative.

The best news is this: everyone can learn to be more creative.  There are proven principles and techniques that enhance the creativity of people.  They are being taught and used across the world.  Those organizations and businesses that fail to create through such methods will fall behind their competitors and eventually be extinct.
                              
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Cynthia A. Hedge is a practicing attorney and CEO of the Center for Creative Solutions, a non-profit organizations “helping people find creative solutions for their personal, professional, business, organizational and community challenges.”   It is located in Michigan City, Indiana.