First Friday Professional Development Webinar – September 2021

Innovation Magic:  Creativity in a Hybrid World

Brief Summary

As the workforce slowly moves into a blended model of work-from-home (WFH) and work-from-the-office, organizations must adapt their innovation processes.  Creativity requires a degree of spontaneity and team members need to share nascent ideas to nurture and grow them.  However, spontaneous creativity has suffered from lack of interactions among people and there is a real concern that WFH team members will be disadvantaged. 

In this presentation, you will learn how to build an effective climate for all team members to enhance creativity.  You will also learn how processes enhance creative problem-solving and how to select collaboration tools.

Speaker : Teresa Jurgens-Kowal

Abstract

Creativity is the work of a lone genius.  Creative answers appear like a flash of lightning.  Creative work is reserved for artists.

WRONG!

All chemical engineers need creativity for innovation, trouble-shooting, and supporting customers.  Creative problem-solving relies on experimentation, learning, and process methods.  Individuals and organizations can nurture creative work in traditional shared office spaces and in hybrid models with dispersed teams. 

As the workforce slowly moves into a blended model of work-from-home (WFH) and work-from-the-office, organizations must adapt their innovation processes.  Creativity requires a degree of spontaneity and team members need to share nascent ideas to nurture and grow them.  However, spontaneous creativity has suffered from lack of interactions among people and there is a real concern that WFH team members will be disadvantaged. 

Learning Objectives

1. You will learn how to engage all team members in creative, collaborative work regardless of distance or space.
2. You will learn how to implement a process to drive enhanced creativity and problem-solving at all levels of the organization.
3. You will learn how to select simple tools that support collaboration and productivity to improve your work as a chemical engineer.

Outline

• Three myths of creativity
• Why creativity and innovation are important to engineering
• Building the climate for creativity
• Process steps to enhance idea generation and problem-solving
• How to select simple tools to improve collaborative thinking