Idea Work and organizational creativity

Introduction

This is a course about how to manage idea work and organizational creativity to achieve excellence in change, innovation and development projects in organizations.

We start from three premises: 1) that creativity is important in all industries and organizations, 2) that creativity can be thought of as practices for generating, shaping, communicating, and handling ideas – idea work, and 3) that the such practices are collective as much as individual and can be systematically improved.

The course offers students novel and tested hands-on practices for managing idea work and organizational creativity. Students will learn from discussion of rich international cases from practice leaders, from new theory as well as joint work on real cases and a series of practical games and tools. You will be challenged to discover and cultivate those creative practices in which you yourself can thrive, manage at your best and be valuable to others.

Course content

The course is set to run for four days. The pedagogy is highly participant oriented, and each day will have an integrative mix of i) case discussion, ii) work on real life challenges, iii) lectures and iv) games and exercises

Day 1:
Introducing and preparing for idea work: What is idea work and organizational creativity? How do we manage it? Practices for prepping and zooming out. Games for opening. Case: Southwest Airlines in a different world.

Day 2:
Getting physical with idea work: Practices for getting physical and double rapid prototyping. Games for visualizing, exploring and selecting. Case: Design thinking and innovation at Apple.

Day 3:
Motivating creativity: Practices for activating drama and daring to imagine. Games for launching and imagining. Case: Managing creativity at Shanghai Tang.

Day 4:
Handling controversy in idea work: Practices for generative resistance and punk production. Games for playing and closing. Case: Rob Parsons at Morgan Stanley.