Course overview
Reignite or fan the flames of ambition, capability and effectiveness with provocations and practical techniques to help set benchmarks and inspire. All lessons learnt from a long career at the creative coal-face.
Campus locations
What you'll learn
- Build on six key areas that affect your creativity
- Find new ways to have ideas
- Engage the support of others to increase your effectiveness
- Use ‘why’ to have more effective ideas
- Use truth as a weapon – we’re all responsible for insight
- Inspire and influence your colleagues
Study method
- Online
- Blended
- In-class

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Duration study load
- 1 day
- 7 CPD hours
Who's it for?
This course is recommended for junior to senior agency or in-house creatives who would benefit from independent external input to challenge and support their development
Action plan
Action plan: how to be a more effective creative
- Attendees will spend the last section of the day writing a tangible and practical action plan they can take back into their workplace to guide their day to day thinking and interactions
Please note: this course will involve some practical pre-work to bring to the session:
- I love this: bring a piece of creative work that you love. It could be yours or someone else’s
- Wow, that’s brave: bring a piece of creative work that demonstrates bravery or might have scared everyone to death
- Out of the ordinary: before attending the course actively do something you’ve never done before. It doesn’t have to be sky-diving or shaving your head, but it could be watching a TV series or film that’s the complete opposite of your normal choice; visiting a venue or event you’d never normally go to; engage an individual or group in conversation that you’d never normally meet. Come prepared to share what you’ve learnt
Subjects
- Considerable academic consensus exists around the conditions required within an organisation for creativity to flourish. ‘How to be a more effective creative’ takes the Innovation Engine model created by Dr Tina Seelig at Stanford University as its point of reference
- At the outset of the session course, attendees will be introduced to the theory of the Innovation Engine, the principles behind it and the 6 core conditions which underpin it
- Understanding the language of creativity
- Exercise: agreeing on a common definition for creativity
- Exercise: sharing and discussing favourite work and ideas
- The difference between ideas and execution
- What is effectiveness?
- Exercise: agreeing on a common definition for effective creative work
- The timeless technique for producing ideas
- Discussion: The value of creative partnerships
- The importance of diverse teams
- Miles Davis and radical collaboration
- Diversity and innovation: 6 behaviours that unlock new thinking
- Whole-brain thinking – the latest thinking on how we think
- Some practical initiatives to fuel effective creativity
- Extended exercise: mini brief
- Discussion: why have you chosen this career?
- Exercise: articulating and reflecting on your ambition
- Discussion: sharing experiences of doing something out of the ordinary
- Discussion: exploring fear and how to put it into perspective
- Exercise: sharing and discussing examples of brave creative
- Extended exercise: identifying the rules of an industry sector and how its rules and tropes might be broken
- Inspiring and influencing colleagues
- Your greatest resource: the value of creative time
- Discussion: how is creative time valued in your company and how would you want to change this?
- Insight – where it comes from and how you can play a part
- Discussion: how is your environment geared towards creativity and what could you do to change or influence it?
- Leadership and trust: how is creativity supported within organisations
- Margaret Heffernan and the principle of social capital
- Discussion: How does your company culture foster creativity and how can you influence this?
Attendees will spend the last section of the day writing a tangible and practical action plan they can take back into their work place to guide their day to day thinking and interactions.
- I love this: bring a piece of creative work that you love. It could be yours or someone else’s.
- Wow, that’s brave: bring a piece of creative work that demonstrates bravery or might have scared everyone to death.
- Out of the ordinary: before attending the course actively do something you’ve never done before. It doesn’t have to be sky-diving or shaving your head, but it could be watching a TV series or film that’s the complete opposite of your normal choice; visiting a venue or event you’d never normally go to; engage an individual or group in conversation that you’d never normally meet. Come prepared to share what you’ve learnt.
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