An Introduction to Creative Huddle

An Introduction to Creative Huddle

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  Helping you harness theawesome power of human creativity.
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  Let’s start withwhy. Today it's resourcefulness, not resources, that drives competitive outcomes. Creativity doesn't always beat big, but that's the way to bet. Gary Hamel Our findings demonstrate a robust correlation between highly innovative, diverse companies and market growth. Center for Talent Innovation The vast majority of executives, 93%, continue to regard their company’s long-term success to be dependent on its ability to innovate but at the same time less than one out of five (18%) believe their own innovation strategy is delivering a competitive advantage. Accenture, Why “Low Risk” Innovation Is Costly Big companies are really bad at innovation because they’re designed to be bad at innovation. Harvard Business Review Expansion in the creative industries outstripped the UK economy as a whole in 2011-12. It is the UK's fastest- growing sector, worth £71.4bn a year and making up 5.6% of the workforce. Department for Media, Culture and Sport 8 in 10 people feel that unlocking creativity is critical to economic growth and nearly two-thirds of respondents feel creativity is valuable to society, yet a striking minority – only 1 in 4 people – believe they are living up to their own creative potential. Adobe State of Create Study Creativity and commercial success go hand in hand. The data is bulletproof. Jonathan Mildenhall, Coca-Cola At most companies, top executives do not feel personally responsible for coming up with strategic innovations. Rather, they feel responsible for facilitating the innovation process. In stark contrast, senior executives of the most innovative companies—a mere 15% in our study—don’t delegate creative work. They do it themselves. Clayton Christensen The best way to predict the future is to create it. Peter Drucker Events, threats and opportunities aren't just coming at us faster or with less predictability, they are converging and influencing each other to create entirely unique situations. These firsts-of-their-kind developments require unprecedented degrees of creativity—which has become a more important leadership quality than attributes like management discipline, rigor, or operational acumen. Samuel Palmisano, CEO, IBM The best way to help people be creative is to teach them the methods of creative thinking. It’s not enough to just tell people you want them to be more creative. After all, if you want someone to learn French, you don’t just tell them you want them to speak French, and that’s that. You’d send them to language classes. Sir Ken Robinson
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  This calls fora manifesto! We’re with John. We believe that creative thinking is not purely a God-given gift; it is a skill, which can therefore be taught. Granted, some may be more naturally able to call on our creative talents than others, but we can all add to our creative abilities in order to reach our creative potential. ! Recent research shows 8 in 10 people feel that unlocking creativity is critical to economic growth, yet a striking minority – only 1 in 4 people – believe they are living up to their own creative potential. Nearly three-quarters (71%) say creative thinking should be taught. ! Creativity training will help you and your company innovate, work more efficiently, create better teams, enhance motivation, beat the competition and get the most out of your talented workforce. ! We want you to learn, but we’re realistic enough to know that most people want to make progress and breakthroughs on current projects too. That’s why our workshops are flexible enough to incorporate problems and challenges from any organisation or industry. Try us! ! The fact you're reading this document means you're considering working with us - that’s great. We aim to give you a thorough overview of our services, and have included illustrations of how we work with clients, and how our content is designed. It’s no substitute for a face-to-face discussion though, so if you like what you read, please get in touch! “Creativity is not a talent. It is a way of operating.” John Cleese Today it's resourcefulness, not resources, that drives competitive outcomes. Creativity doesn't always beat big, but that's the way to bet. Gary Hamel
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  A typical client’sjourney with us It all starts with a free evaluation - a meeting that explores: The trial we recommend is our one-day Understand workshop. Pick up to 12 delegates and we’ll help them gain an appreciation of their own creative talents and process, enabling them to take a proactive approach to future creative work. ! This is our core workshop, and underpins much of our other content. Contact us for costs. - Results enable the most relevant content to be pitched at the right audience, thus cuts wastage and improves training ROI - Ability to compare regions, functions and levels - A benchmark for measuring our impact This covers: What we will deliver - How it will benefit you - How it will work - How long it will take - Who will work with you - What it will cost - How we will measure the results. !! vs ! How we might help you get there We then suggest a trial - to see if you're happy with the way we work and vice versa. Next, most clients get their employees to complete our measurement diagnostic. Measurement Diagnostic: Online survey that explores markers for creative behaviour Your current situation where you want to be We’ll then write you a detailed plan & proposal. Once you’ve approved our proposal, we’re ready for rollout. Each employee receives: We will work with you to develop the right messaging to introduce our work. This also includes working with you to develop compelling material to encourage buy-in. We look forward to starting our journey together soon. Understand takes participants on a journey of self-discovery, in which they learn how ideas are generated. This includes how the brain sorts everything into patterns, and how this can stop creativity in its tracks. We also cover elements of psychology, personality and motivation to complete the picture. Work closely with leadership & internal comms Establish champions - senior leaders & influentials Workshop schedule according to proposal plan Support HR & leadership We will work with you to develop a relevant support and recognition structure for these new behaviours. • Tailored schedule & background information • Printed handouts summarising key points • Regular emails with ongoing challenges, tasks & insights to embed learning - all related to content and current role & projects • Guidelines for further reading & development • Invitations to Creative Huddle special eventsWe will work with you to identify and enlist catalysts and early-adopters within your organisation. We will create a schedule of activity that fits with your financial calendar and strategic objectives. Regular evaluations We’ll continue to provide regular evaluations, at no cost, to deliver recommendations for ongoing development. ! These are formed from repeated completions of our measurement diagnostic, as well as some behaviourally-based assessments that we’ll help you initiate, designed to assess the impact of our activity, revealing indicators and markers for future training.
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  People say nicethings I attended with my team, and we all found it very useful to take time out of our busy diaries to think about the art of ideation. Angela Maurer, Head of Innovation, tesco.com The day was fantastic and offered the attendees a more detailed insight into creativity than I think they ever appreciated ahead of the event. Very well read and knowledgeable, and able to capture and educate on such an abstract topic in a very concise and understandable way for a range of personalities. Gareth Jones, Welsh Innovation Centre for Enterprise A highly interactive session, full of energy, insightful ideas and new ways of working. I have no hesitation in recommending Creative Huddle. Jane Hague, Excel London After the session, my colleague and I couldn't stop talking about the new ideas we had generated in our heads, all of which happened in such a short period of time. I would recommend Creative Huddle to any company who have reached a creative stalemate. Heidi Swain, University of Sussex Creative Huddle helped develop our creative confidence at London Youth Games. Over two days they led us through some of the leading thinking in creativity and got us all engaged in hands on activity specifically aimed at developing new ideas to solve the most important challenges we face. Russell Findlay, London Youth Games Just wanted to say how much everyone got out of Friday’s workshop. It was immensely stimulating. Ben Jeffries, marketing manager, The Barbican
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  A creative organisation’sDNA Corporate hierarchies can stifle innovation. Creative leadership allows for play and encourages company-wide collaboration. We help leaders manage creativity by building skills to understand and communicate with talented teams. Creative organisations generate ideas at all levels, and know how to produce when it matters. Most importantly, leaders must be able to evaluate those ideas and turn them into useful innovations. Read more about each of these stages on the following pages. How our content builds creative businesses
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  Our content Choose from10 workshops to suit your ambitions & requirements Our Creative Skillset workshops start by helping people to understand creativity – what it is, how it works – knowing these things can help us to understand our own creative abilities and what we can do to improve them. ! Our Creative Culture workshops help organisations integrate innovation-friendly practices into corporate HR policy. This includes how to promote and reward creative thinking, integrating this into appraisals and performance reviews, and recruiting for innovation. ! Great Creative Leadership identifies employees with a creative spark, energy or vision – and works with them in a way that is designed to realise their potential. But leaders don’t always have to ‘lead’ – better to give employees the freedom and flexibility to make choices to give them creative control. Creative Skillset Creative Culture Creative Leadership The best way to predict the future is to create it. Peter Drucker Our corporate training content is primarily delivered in the form of in-house workshops, which can be taken as essentials (half-day) or in-depth (full-day). These flexible workshops, with content designed to be easily tailored to your organisation and industry, break creativity down into 10 areas:
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  Know your creativebrain Because of its unique and personal nature, creativity means something slightly different to everyone. ! It is extremely useful to think about how creativity works, and the most important aim is to understand our own creativity. Create exciting new ideas Outstanding creative thinking is based on seeing things differently to find a fresh approach. Sometimes getting to Eureka takes serious work. ! Our brains love patterns and habits, so often we need a few tricks up our sleeves. The best way to help people be creative is to teach them the methods of creative thinking. It’s not enough to just tell people you want them to be more creative. After all, if you want someone to learn French, you don’t just tell them you want them to speak French, and that’s that. You’d send them to language classes. Sir Ken Robinson Result: participants gain an appreciation of their own creative talents and process, enabling them to take a proactive approach to future creative work. Result: participants learn a number of creative thinking techniques to enable them to generate bigger and better ideas. A highly engaging and useful workshop.
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  Focus on whatmatters Interruptions, blockages, bad time management and team inefficiency can cause creativity to be pushed to the margins. ! Productive Creativity helps people fight bad habits and put a premium on creative time. Prototype and test ideas We use prototyping as a valuable creative thinking technique and explain how it can be applied to a variety of projects and activities. ! This approach ensures a company pursues goals of real value and allows shortcomings to be rooted out by the harshest of tests – real world experience. Inventing something cool that can’t be implemented isn’t creative. Seth Godin Result: participants learn how to create effective prototypes and models of their work to explore problems, receive feedback and test and refine solutions. Result: participants learn how to reduce distractions and procrastination to focus on creativity. Great for reducing stress as well as increasing creative output.
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  Describe your thinking Tobe able to communicate ideas effectively you need to express yourself clearly, concisely and with impact. ! You also need to engage your audience, whether that audience is one collaborator or a room full of stakeholders. You need creative communication. Be a team player No man is an island. Clusters of creatives spark off each other, solving puzzles together, creating new combinations and building bigger and better ideas. ! As well as learning how to form teams to maximise creative performance, we look at the most productive creative thinking techniques for teams. In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed. Charles Darwin Result: participants learn about the dynamics of successful creative teams, and about their unique strengths in teamwork situations. Highly motivating. Result: participants learn skills involved in communicating and giving feedback on ideas, as well as how to engage audiences- colleagues, stakeholders or consumers.
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  Keep a creativemindset A person with a creative mindset is open to new ideas and curious to discover. They have the motivation and drive to solve tricky problems and think different. ! This applies to organisations too - who can foster, stimulate and encourage innovation through resources and culture. Drive better brainstorms Enthusing people to generate, share and develop their thoughts is an art. Facilitating better meetings and brainstorms will transform your organisation’s idea power. ! We like to help our clients run carefully moderated group sessions where activity is alternated between collective discussion and bursts of individual creativity. Creative confidence can inspire whatever work you already do - because you gain a new tool to enhance your problem-solving practices without having to abandon any of your existing techniques. Tom & David Kelley Result: participants learn skills and strategies for running and participating in idea generation meetings. You’ll love our short, sharp, focused bouts of creativity. Result: participants learn how to develop and maintain a creative mindset - how to keep questioning the status quo and gain inspiration from the world around them.
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  Build a creativebusiness Successful creative organisations balance both creativity and business. ! Leaders should be able to identify employees with a creative spark, energy or vision – and be able to work with them in a way that is designed to realise their potential. Gather and choose the best The ability to recognise an idea’s potential, and then develop it in the right way, is crucial. Will it be profitable, will people want to use it? Can it be tested to prove demand? ! Will it come across any ‘closed thinking’, resistance or power struggles? Is it right for the company culture – is there existing motivation and commitment to deliver on the idea? Can existing processes and resources be used, or does it require a new set-up? Result: participants learn how to develop creative leadership skills, including how to find, motivate and reward employees who demonstrate innovative working practices. Result: participants practice objectively appraising ideas, and learn a range of best practices and strategies to increase idea submission and adoption in organisations.
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  Our team A smallcore, with trusted friends & associates. James Allen John Harrison Claire Allen Simon Smith Steve Bustin Andrew Sleigh Paolo Feroleto Claire Wyatt Roughly two-thirds of our innovation skills still come through learning—from first understanding the skill, then practicing it, and ultimately gaining confidence in our capacity to create. Clayton Christensen For virtually all companies regardless of sector, competitive strength and market growth depend on innovation. Gaining market share and expanding into new markets hinges on winning over new consumers or clients by identifying unmet needs and developing new products, services, and systems to fill them. In today’s fiercely competitive global economy, it is serial innovation that drives and sustains growth. Center for Talent Innovation
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  Contact us We likeit when people get in touch. We're based at The Skiff, a nice little place to work in the middle of Brighton. We work on projects across the UK (and beyond!), but do enjoy coming back to the coast afterwards. ! ! ! Creative Huddle The Skiff Gloucester Street Brighton BN1 4EW 01424 319467 ! www.creativehuddle.co.uk [email protected] John F Kennedy