Global Conversations facilitated by Linda Naiman of Creativity at Work are recorded monthly teleconference between CSTC members around a particular theme. They take the form of an introduction followed by a 40 minute presentation with a 15 minute Q&A to finish and are then edited into podcasts for general consumption.
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May 2010
Managing Sustainably with Passion
with
Dr. Paul Shrivastava,
David O’Brien Distinguished Professor and Director
The David O’Brien Centre for Sustainable Enterprise
John Molson School of Business, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada.
Before I even knew the word "Sustainability" my eco-footprint was 2 tons of carbon per year. Thirty years later, I fully understand what sustainability means, and have published 40 papers + one book on the topic - my eco footprint is now 22 tons of carbon per year. So, understanding sustainability concepts was not sufficient to live sustainably. I will explore this dilemma, and argue that for our world to move towards sustainability, in addition to cognitive understanding of the concepts and techniques of sustainability, we also need emotional and passionate connection to it. Passion is engaging the issue holistically with mind, body and emotions (spirit). Developing passion for sustainability can be aided by use of arts based methods, because the arts are both a repository of human emotions, and a way for evoking sensory and emotional perceptions. Art can help us to sharpen our sensory awareness of our environment. Van Gogh's paintings and Ed Burtinsky's photographs make us see nature differently. This form of holistic engagement cuts across a major schism in our approach to managing sustainably - between understanding and action or between theory and practice.
Join us for a conversation on art, passion, sustainability, and the work of the David O'Brien Centre for Sustainable Enterprise at Concordia University in Montreal, which seeks to understand the science, the art, the politics and practice of sustainable organizations. Participants will gain an arts-based perspective on sustainability. We will explore how arts is being used both by artists and activists to engage challenges of sustainable development. Join us to find out how ecological art can be a ‘subversive science’ with far-reaching ramifications for all spheres of human society.
About Dr. Paul Shrivastava
Dr. Paul Shrivastava, is currently the David O’Brien Distinguished Professor and Director of the David O’Brien Centre for Sustainable Enterprise at the John Molson School of Business, Concordia University, Montreal. He also serves as Senior Advisor at Bucknell University and the IIM-Shillong, India, and on the Board of Trustees of DeSales University, Allentown, Pennsylvania.
Dr. Shrivastava was part of the team of professionals who helped to found Hindustan Computer Ltd., one of India's largest computer companies. He founded the non-profit Industrial Crisis Institute, Inc. in New York, and published the Industrial Crisis Quarterly. He founded Organization and Environment, (published by Sage Publications). He was founding President and CEO of eSocrates, Inc., a knowledge management software company, and the founding Chair of ONE Division of the Academy of Management.
Dr. Shrivastava received his Ph. D. from the University of Pittsburgh. He was tenured Associate Professor of Management at the Stern School of Business, NYU, and the Howard I. Scott Chair at Bucknell University. He has published 15 books and over 100 articles in scholarly and professional journals. He has served on the editorial boards of leading management education journals including the Academy of Management Review, the Strategic Management Journal, Organization, Business Strategy and the Environment, and the International Journal of Sustainable Strategic Management. He won a Fulbright Senior Scholar Award. His work has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Christian Science Monitor, and on the McNeil-Lehrer News Hour.
He co-organized the Steelman Triathlon 2005, 06, 07, the Passionman Triathlon 2008,09 and DJed of the World Tango Music show on WVBU, 90.5FM, Lewisburg, PA.
Click here to listen to the conversation
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April 2010
Leadership as Art
with
Dr. Steven S. Taylor
Associate Professor
Department of Management
the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) Worcester, Massachusetts, USA.
In this interview Steve talks about his recent research on arts based processes in learning which is starting to show the more emotion you have, the more learning you have and thus the importance of selecting the right media or medium to use when working in this spacew. eg what difference might one experience if using Lego as oppsoed to clay. He also offers a sneak preview of a special issue of the journal "Leadership" he is editing themed under the title "Leadership As Art" that will be published in August 2010.
Steven Taylor is an American playwright and a leading global researcher in the world of arts and business, He is an associate professor in the Department of Management at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA. His research focuses on the aesthetics of organizational action and reflective practice. Recently his academic work has focused on theorizing the use of arts-based process within organizations and exploring beautiful action within organizations. Steve is also a playwright whose work has been performed in England, France, Poland, Canada, New Zealand, and the USA.
Click here for more details on Steve's work
Click here to listen to the interview in full
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November 2009
(Examples and stories of creative Chinese in business, art and living)
Since 2005 Helen operates a China based strategic consulting business in Beijing. Her main focus has been advising multinational corporate and overseas government clients on various China challenges at the senior executive level, also consults to Chinese businesses going global.
Helen holds an MBA, a Master of Business in Finance from Australia and a BA (English Language and Literature) from Peking University, China.
For more details please see www.chinatimeinc.com and www.thinklikechinese.com
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October 2009
Creativity and Innovation - The Cross-Cultural Dimension
with
Professor Kirpal Singh PhD
Director
Wee Kim Wee Centre
The Singapore Management University
Singapore
Prof Kirpal Singh is internationally renowned as a creativity guru and futurist, and wears many different and differently coloured turbans: He is a Founding Member of the CSTC and is currently Director of the Wee Kim Wee Center at the Singapore Management University, where he also teaches creativity. (visit: www. smu.edu.sg -click Centres and click WKWC)
Kirpal is also a Director of the Singapore International Film Festival and sits on numerous other Boards. As a consultant, he works with governments, non-profits and multinationals, on the issues and challenges of the sensitive arena of cross/intercultural engagements.
Clients include IBM, AMEX, L'Oreal, Daimler, and Novartis.
He is also Adjunct Faculty of Creativity Workshops and has conducted these workshops in Europe, USA, Singapore, and Australia, Kirpal’s well-known book THINKING HATS & COLOURED TURBANS: Creativity Across Cultures (Prentice-Hall, 2004) was an instant sell-out and he is now working on a *sequel*.
Kirpal is a highly sought-after Keynote speaker and he has given talks and seminars at many of the top universities of the world, including Yale, MIT, Georgetown, and Cambridge. Kirpal is also a highly acclaimed poet and fictionist, in addition to being a very respected scholar in the field of literary/cultural studies.
In his other life Kirpal is the very proud father of three girls and a son.
Click here to listen to the podcast
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September 2009
The Dance of Leadership
Based on Professor Denhardt's book, The Dance of Leadership. the conversation focuses on the art of leadership, employing material from art, music, and especially dance to discover new ways of thinking about leadership and new ways of sharpening one’s leadership skills. A key idea explored is whether art is a metaphor for leadership or whether leadership is in fact an art.
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August 2009
Creativity and on improving human maturity / wisdom / emotional intelligence /eldering
Presentation by Bob Eckert New and Improved, LLC
Bob Eckert is a founding partner at New & Improved, LLC. He came to the creativity & innovation field via his work in youth empowerment. His methods were focused on developing humility, curiosity, courage, passion & tenacity in the youth leaders he was working with around the world. As an artifact of this work, graduates of his programs became incredibly creative. For the past 15 years, he has been working primarily with adults in corporate, government and educational settings. He is seeing an interesting connection between the following 5 dynamics:
· Creativity skills development methodological maturity
· Serious commercial interest in the science of innovation
· Emotional intelligence development
· A desire for deeper meaning in work & life in the baby boom
cohort
· A desire for constant development in the millennial cohort.
Click here to listen to the podcast presentation in full
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July 2009
Creativity, Connectivity, Transformation
Presentation by John Cimino, president and CEO of Creative Leaps International
John's work is informed by studies in neuroscience, perception, learning and creativity, the study of complex dynamic systems, the origins of order, musical composition, poetry, mathematics and the history of science. The broad theme of the presentation is about looking at what we strive to do and how we go about doing It. John shares insights into the why and how from four inspiring sources: G. Bateson, B. Fuller, M. Cervantes, M. Greene.
About John Cimino
John has a formal background in the sciences, education and the performing arts and for more than three decades has been a pioneer in interdisciplinary approaches to thinking, teaching and learning.
He and his colleagues from Creative Leaps International and The Learning Arts, work regularly with children, teachers, college students, university faculty and administrators, leaders in the corporate and government sectors, scientists, inventors and entrepreneurs. Their clients have included IBM, GE, Pfizer, McDonnell Gouglas, the World Bank, the Bank of Montreal, the Center for Creative Leadership, Washington DC's Center for Excellence in Municipal Management, the White House and dozens of universities, business schools and professional associations across North America. He has also undertaken a number of special projects with the George Washington University Instititute for Crisis, Disaster and Risk Management, the American Red Cross, and the police, fire, and rescue workers at Ground Zero following 9-11. As a performing artist, John Cimino is the winner of more than 20 national and international awards and prizes as an operatic and concert performer and has performed to acclaim throughout Europe and the continental United States in productions including LA BOHEME (Academy of Music, Philadelphia, opposite tenor Luciano Pavarotti, and LUISA MILLER (International Verdi Festival of Busetto, Italy, opposite tenor Carlo Bergonzi).
Visit his websites here:
www.learningarts.org www.creativeleaps.org www.icarusmusic.org
Click here to listen to the full podcast presentation.
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June 2009
Deep Diving
Presentation by Cynthia Duval, Founder, the Pacific Ethnographic Research Center
Cynthia takes us on a deep dive into creativity through her ethnographic lens-- uncovering how ethnography works to uncover history, culture, emotions, needs and wants of a target audience. Linda naiman writes "Her feedback caused me to reframe, refine and rewrite my marketing message from a deep dive perspective".
About Cynthia Duval com/in/rockhollowstudios Click here to listen to the full podcast presentation Click here to listen to the Q&A
Cynthia Duval is a cultural psychologist who specializes in usingapplied ethnographic research to discover innovation opportunities. She has worked for Xerox Palo Alto Research Center studying artist/ scientist collaborations, Microsoft Mobile Electronics doing an ethnography of mobile professional work practices, and Verizon Labs identifying new service concepts for Broadband to the home technology and at IBM studying complex collaboration.
Cynthia recently founded the Pacific Ethnographic Research Center, to do work that is good for people, nature and the world using ethnographic work to inform education, advocacy and entrepreneurial activities. One of her projects is called Family Farms: Life on the Edge. This project is an exploration of contemporary family farm life in and around the foothills of the Cascade Mountains near Mount Rainier in Washington, USA.
Cynthia has a BA in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Oregon and an MA in Aesthetic Education Research from University of California Santa Cruz.
Cynthia invites you to contact her at CynthiaDuval1@gmail.com and link up with her at www.linkedin.
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