*No drawing experience and skills are required.
Bring your team for a day among the flowers to find out!
What if our best ideas and boldest innovations are to be found not through endless brainstorming sessions, but rather through … letting go?
By switching off our thinking brains, turning on our senses, and tuning into the natural world we open new access to nature’s inspirational playbook and to our own inherent creativity.
Consider George de Mestral, the inventor of Velcro, whose concept of hook-and-loop fasteners was inspired by the tiny hooked burrs he picked out of his dog’s fur after a hike. Or the engineers behind the bullet train, who studied the aerodynamics of the kingfisher bird’s beak to understand how to minimize air pressure on the speeding train.
From Newton’s apple through to these more modern discoveries, observation of the design and art in nature holds endless potential for human advancement; and, it is by connecting with nature that we discover the full creative capacity within ourselves.
Let us bring art, nature and discovery to your team today through the Blooming Innovation workshop series.
Innovation: A major strategic concern for sustainable growth
Innovation, along with marketing and leadership, is the major theme of the 2019 Nordic Business Forum.
Not surprisingly, the need for increased innovation is one of the five major strategic concerns expressed by senior executives. This need is driven by the desire for increased revenues and greater market share. As pressure increases for growth, innovation brings hope for the solution.
Innovation has been highlighted as one the major factors in the Nordic counties’social and economic performances (Visa pour l’Europe du Nord).
At the core of innovation is creativity. Creativity unleashes the potential of the brain to conceive new ideas which in turn can become innovation. Creativity fuels the engine of innovation, and without it, there can be no innovation!
Creativity is being touted by business leaders, by educational reformers, economists and folks like Daniel Pink (who was also features at the Nordic Business Forum) as the number one factor we need for student success, economic growth and general happiness.
But the “how to” of innovation remains mysterious and elusive
Innovation means change. How do you manage resistance to change?
Innovation is bright and shiny with a feel good vibe but often without substance. How do make it concrete and real?
Innovation is risky. How do you manage that previous screw-up and continue to enhance innovation?
Innovation requires a mindset. How do you experience that creative spark and transform into actionable real life?
How do you foster innovation in your company, with your team and with yourself?
“There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing”
Chances are that you have painful memories of brainstorming sessions starting with an order to come up with “good ideas and be creative”. This approach highlights how we misunderstand the way the brain works and it generates ideas.
To unleash your creative potential, you need to put in place the conditions that will favor the brain to develop a creative mindset.
This shift in perspective is what you experience during the Blooming Innovation Workshop.
What can my team get out of the Blooming Innovation Workshop?
The objectives of the workshop include:
As a result, the team learns to:
- Understand when the process is more important than the results
- Become comfortable with the uncertainty of not knowing what will happen next
- Generate ideas, solve problems and translate them into real life
- Embrace the idea of failure and put aside control
- Develop the skills of reading different situations and adapting to clients’ different needs
- Explore the creative process using drawing as a tool and through the multisensory experience of working with flowers
- Favor the creative side of the mind
- Experience ways to solve problems, find comfort in ambiguity and generate ideas
- Recognize and learn to trust the unique creative capacities in each of us
- Foster the spirit of generosity in your team
- Play together in a special place with beautiful flowers!
How does the Blooming Innovation Workshop work?
Too often, brainstorming sessions call on the analytical brain, when the best way to generate ideas is to take action.
Combining playing with flowers and drawing, engages the entire body, which means innovating by doing.
First, by sorting and processing the flowers, you learn how to become intimate with your innovation challenge. This process can be messy, and thrilling. We learn how to distinguish the good from the bad, and to clean up the flowers to keep them fresh for as long as possible.
Then we draw the flowers, which introduces you to new ways to look at and understand the innovation challenges ahead for your team. The structure of the exercises leads you to discover the different elements of drawing. Marie walks you through the golden rules of visual creation, and introduces us to the key attributes of creativity. While your team explores each element such as contour, gesture or space, each team member gets in the zone and reveals their own style. No drawing experience and skills are required.
Finally, we put the flowers together into beautiful bouquets as a way to solidify your learnings and symbolize the tangible results of your innovation. Kati will introduce your team to some fundamentals of flower styling, and then each member of the team will have a chance to create bouquets. These bouquets will later be donated to an elderly home or a hospital.
Between each activity we take a break, because this work takes a lot of brain energy. During these breaks we share thoughts and feedback on how the flowers and the drawing relate to your actual work.
This can be offered as a full-day or half-day session.
You are interested? Let’s talk!
PS: Not ready for a full training day but still interested in the topic. Let’s make it an innovative networking event. Let’s talk again 😉
