You will:

• Deliberately apply your imagination,
• Identify blocks to creativity,
• Share a common language and process for problem solving,
• Become more effective at working through obstacles,
• Recognize new opportunities for growth in your work and your life and
• Apply the tools and techniques of CPS while working on real problems, challenges and opportunities.

You will access the fullness of your creative identity - empowering a fully creative lifestyle that invigorates everything you imagine, do and create. One, you’ll amplify our conscious learning through joyful and serious play. Two, you'll invoke insights from the unconscious by drawing images of your potential and sculpting them in clay and movement. Last, you'll invoke visions of your deepest and most creative identity through music, meditation and soulful empowerments. The result: an affirmation of your core identity: a radiant and creative being capable of attracting success, delight and pizzazz in every aspect of your life.

This highly interactive workshop features experiential exercises galore: movement, sharing, crafts, imaging, soul-searching, celebrations and provocative music. The key words: aspire, attract, love, flow, witness, spirit, contribute and give thanks.

Participants will be empowered to:

• Experience being fully alive: playful, aware and capable of enjoying the ability to celebrate your conscious, pre-conscious  and formerly unconscious energies and images.
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• Trust in your natural and  continuous unfolding, allowing yourself to be and express your creative essence - independent of set systems or merely cognitive pursuit of goals.
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• Use play, music, active meditation, drawing and movement to stimulate the fullness of your creative core - that field of radiant energy, which once affirmed, will invigorate every aspect of your life.

Everyone has the capacity for breakthrough creative thinking and collaboration. Yes, everyone! Join us to learn a practical yet strategic approach to design thinking and skills for facilitating cocreation with consumers, clients and internal teams. We will explore and experience the 6 Ds of design thinking facilitation including Define, Diagnose, Design, Deliver, Document and Debrief. Each step includes hands on learning, reflective discussion, specific examples, and a commitment to action steps that ensure participants emerge confident about new skills and opportunities to use them.

Participants will:

• Explore the meaning and methods of design thinking and co-creation, including the value for business and other contexts.
• Learn, experience and practice the 6 Ds of design thinking facilitation (Define, Diagnose, Design, Deliver, Deliverable, Debrief).
• Gain skills and confidence to facilitate design thinking experiences and identify specific action steps you can make to immediately apply your learning.

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The concept of creativity as a “complete process” is fundamental to the teachings of Basadur Applied Creativity. We have pioneered the development of the technology and techniques of application of this concept in business, industry and organizations. “Complete process” refers to valuing diverging and converging processes equally, and also valuing problem finding, problem solving and solution implementation processes equally. Also fundamental to this concept is the valuing of diversity. People with different aptitudes for different portions of the complete process can contribute their best “shots” within the complete process. Thus, people with differing “styles” of creative problem solving can leverage themselves for the good of their team. They can contribute accordingly while being valued by other members with differing, complementary styles. Upon completion of this workshop, participants are trained and authorized to purchase and administer the Basadur Creative Problem Solving Profile (CPSP) as both a training and development device and a research instrument.

Participants will:

• Increase your emphasis and understanding of creative problem solving as a complete process;
• Increase your sensitivity to individual differences in styles of creativity;
• Provide groups with a method to improve the quantity and quality of their interactions.

Note: This session has a size limit, so sign up early, SOLD OUT

How can an organization make innovation part of its DNA?

Developing creativity at a personal, team, and organizational level is a leadership imperative for thriving in a world of accelerating change. However, the roadmap for achieving this is often either elusive, overwhelming or insufficient to deal with the complexities of the leadership challenge in making creativity an integral part of their organization’s capabilities. Savvy leaders recognize that to make innovation thrive they need to simultaneously orchestrate changes in a number of different innovation drivers at different levels of the organization. The innovation drivers are:

• the Sources of efficient creativity (Talent, Energy, Method)

• a Structure to drive innovation (Individual, Team, Target, System)

• a Culture that makes creativity a potent force in an organizational context (Ideas, Engagement, Freedom, Humor, Risk)

This workshop introduces a model and set of elegant principles that makes these innovation drivers tangible (published by Dimis Michaelides in a book of the same title in 2007). Participants will learn practical tools and techniques for applying these principles thus enabling them to design and develop robust, innovative organizations.

Participants will also take an organization audit, which will enable them to assess their own organization’s innovation potential.

Through original presentations, exploratory activities, ventures into the visual arts and magic, the workshop will transform the complexities of organizational innovation into the realm of the possible and feasible.

Expected Outcomes

By the end of the workshop, participants will:

• be able to recognize 12 key elements required to make innovation an integral part of any organization

• have audited their own organization and identified what supports and what inhibits innovation

• have initiated a plan to enhance their own organization’s innovation capability

• be able to apply fundamentals of creative method to organizational challenges

• be able to distinguish between “effective” and “innovative” teamwork

• be able to analyze and develop interventions for enhancing organizational innovation in different situations using the tools of a savvy innovation consultant

• be positively energized to apply all they have learned

Who needs The Art of Innovation?

Leaders and managers, trainers and consultants who recognize the compelling need for creativity to thrive in current times and are looking for a systematic approach to developing a sustainable capacity for innovation in organizations.

Are you part of a team tasked to be more innovative, but are struggling to achieve much in the way of high-impact results? If so, then this pre-conference is perfect for you. We will spend the day exploring key insights from the More Lightning Less Thunder book. During this session we will move beyond the processes, tools, and techniques that help with creating ideas to focus on the fundamental behaviors and attitudes that energize innovation results within a team environment. We'll bring the concepts of the book to life through a series of exercises that will allow you to refresh your innovation attitudes and skills. When you take these attitudes and skills back to your day job, they will have a direct impact on improving creativity and productivity, while reducing barriers to innovation. It'll be fun, revitalizing, and engaging. (And, hey, guess what...it also works well in your personal life!) 

Seven Key Areas that you will explore: 

1. Surrender to Humanity 
2. Understand Responsibility 
3. Conscious Listening, Clear Speaking 
4. Cultivate Risk Taking 
5. Expect Win-Win 
6. Strive for Constant Improvement 
7. Start, Finish, Start Again

In this session you'll:

• Develop an appreciation of behaviors that can enhance or detract from a team's success with innovation
• Improve listening and communication skills
• Strengthen inter-personal interactions

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Building on the principles of Creative Problem Solving, Productive Thinking is an innovation model used in businesses and MBA programs around the world. Over the years, many sales professionals have asked us to adapt Productive Thinking to the sales environment. The Productive Selling framework is the result of that work. Based on forthcoming book, Sell Better (2013, Penguin, New York), by Tim Hurson and Tim Dunne, the Productive Selling workshop offers a six-step structure that anyone can use to sell more effectively and develop more productive relationships with colleagues, clients, and prospects. Sales are the lifeblood of business. Even if your job isn’t selling per se, you probably often find you need to sell something to someone sometime — whether it’s a product, a service, an investment, an idea, or a rationale for a raise. Large or small, businesses that can’t sell, don't survive. And in business or out, if people can’t sell, they don't thrive. The principles and tools in this workshop can help anyone Sell Better. 

You will learn: 

• How to apply the concept of usefulness to all your sals activities 

• How to convert small talk into big talk and make it pay off in more productive relationships 

• How to conduct and chart the three acts of the sales conversation 

• How, when and which questions will help you connect with your clients and their needs 

• How to demonstrate usefulness by using the CARE approach 

• How to conduct powerful After Action Reviews to analyze and learn from your experiences

TRIZ means the “Theory and Practice of Inventing”. A group of Russian researchers analyzed hundreds of thousands of patents and identified “40 Principles of Inventing”. TRIZ is a Philosophy, Methodology and set of Tools to accelerate the inventing process. It can be defined in 10 words - “All systems Evolve towards Ideality, resolving Contradictions and utilizing Resources”. You will gain an in depth understanding of the “40 Principles of Inventing”, the “Contraction Matrix” and “Evolutionary Trends”.

*You will learn and practice the 8 most used Principles and apply them to a “Back-Home” problem. 

*You will apply the TRIZ technology and invent a “New” product and use the Evolutionary Trends to predict the future. We will break into small groups and identify a personal challenge that needs a creative solution - Personal, Professional or Organizational. We will then apply the Principals and generate new possibilities.

*You will learn the TRIZ Technology for InventingApply the Principles to a “Back-Home” problemUnderstand “Evolutionary Trends” and predict the future

Approaches and Activities to Sharpen Your Facilitation

This advanced workshop focuses on providing participants with information and practices aimed at using the FourSight assessment tool with teams. FourSight is a self-assessment tool that identifies individuals’ preferences for the four fundamental stages of the universal creative process (referred to as Clarifiers, Ideators, Developers, and Implementers). While an understanding of one’s own personal preferences within the creative process is highly useful, another area of great value is the use of FourSight in teams. Through an understanding of the individual creativity-thinking preferences of team members much can be done to improve communication, problem solving, and teamwork. The same insights related to individual preferences in teams also leads to reduced levels of conflict and negative judgments about people who possess different ways of thinking. During this hands-on, interactive, session participants will learn how to use FourSight with teams. Participants will be introduced to the practices useful in debriefing a team using their FourSight results. This will include approaches, activities, tools, stories and research. 

Participants will be able to: 

• Describe the value of being aware of the creative-thinking preferences of individuals working on an intact team.
• Articulate the various ways in which individual thinking preferences influence team dynamics.
• Use a variety of activities and tools when applying the FourSight assessment tool with teams.
• Improve team performance on problem-solving tasks by being able to leverage differences in creative-thinking preferences.

Art teaches us to see the world differently. Remember when you were a child and made mud pies or finger painting masterpieces, when you played statues or marching band? That was the fun of “purposeless play” when there was no judgment. This very hands on workshop is an invitation to play and use the transformative powers of art and movement to access your deepest creative resources. You will recognize new opportunities for growth in your work and your life, and imagine your transition into your next exciting life chapter. Using art, music, and movement you will gain access to previously unexplored resources for joy, clarity, illumination, and enhanced creativity.  Your arts facilitators will guide you as you heighten your understanding of the relationship between creativity and your spiritual journey.

In this session you will:

·  Discover and apply enhanced creativity to identify solutions to real life challenges and opportunities;

·  Encounter your own personal Deva of creativity to energize your journey on your creative and spiritual path;

·  Use your deep creative resources and your new found joy to begin your journey into the CPSI conference and next chapter of your life.

Did you know that humans retain only 15% of what we HEAR, but can recall 60% of what we SEE? Skillful facilitators use all six senses to stimulate individual and group engagement whether you are using CPS in a classroom or in a boardroom. Integrating Visual Facilitation techniques into your agendas can be a powerful means for both novice and experienced facilitators to elevate their practice. This workshop will develop a facilitator’s capability and confidence to use visual approaches to capture, communicate and emphasize information. Facilitators who incorporate visual approaches report significantly increased participation in their sessions; Visual Facilitation helps participants achieve “big picture” thinking more easily, and it creates a visual record of analysis, ideas and agreements to serve as group memory. Perhaps you’ve read David Sibbet’s Visual Meetings, Nancy Duarte’s Slideology, or Robert Horn’s Visual Language: Global Communication for the 21st Century. You may have even tried a few of Dan Roam’s Back of the Napkin graphics yourself, but likely found it challenging to make the leap from reading to doing. If you are ready to dive into Visual Facilitation fully, this is the workshop for you! Leanna Murphy uses a discovery-based learning approach for Visual Facilitation instruction: you will learn by doing. Leanna will interweave theory & concepts with demonstrations, but you will spend 75% of your time at the easel, experimenting, creating, and trying out Visual Facilitation for yourself. Leanna will share best practices & examples, give you time to adapt ideas, create opportunities for peer feedback and offer coaching suggestions.

Learning Objectives:

* An understanding of Visual Facilitation in theory and practice, including business & non-profit examples

* Practical experience working with Visual Facilitation tools & techniques, including many lettering styles and core shapes

* Opportunity to put the pieces together in draft posters & templates, lists, diagrams and metaphors you adapt to your practice

Note: This session has a size limit, so sign up early, only 15 SOLD OUT!!

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LSP is a facilitated thinking and communications technique. It draws on extensive research from the field of business, organization development, psychology and learning. Using hand- brain knowledge this 3D process helps teams surface information, explore ideas, create better options, develop deeper knowledge and identify solutions faster with 100% engagement.

Participants both experience the flow of being a client and also debrief from a facilitators perspective. The room has two tables, the play table for experience and the theory table for facilitation debrief. The day starts fast with a brief introduction of the trainers and then we get our hands on the bricks.  After individual skill building the day moves to individual model building and then group landscapes.  LEGO® Serious Play™ has three stages at each building step: Build, give meaning, tell the story, and reflect.

Participants will:

• Custom develop and facilitate one hour to 3 hour sessions using LSP
• Apply the four step process to improve communication and innovation
• Create shared mental models to help teams perform at their very best
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Note: This session has a size limit, so sign up early, only 18 SOLD OUT