Leadership Summit 2017: Fredrik Haren

Fredrik Haren is a business creativity expert who has authored nine books, including The idea Book – credited as on of “The 100 Best Business Books of All Time.” He is a global speaker who has been invited to speak to leaders in more than 60 countries on six continents on the importance of creativity in solving problems. Recognizing how challenging this is, Haren provides practical steps to help individuals and organizations become more creative.

• Is creativity important in your job? 98% of people think they it is
• Do you think you are creative? 45% people think they are
• Do you think your company is doing enough to develop creativity in its employees? 2% of people think it is
• There is no correlation between creative confidence and actual creativity
• Ideas = one person takes 2 formerly known things and combines them in a new way
• We cannot create out of nothing
• Creativity = a person takes knowledge + information and combining them in a new way
• We spend a lot of time talking about knowledge and information but not the “+”
• The average business/management book only sells 3,000 copies
• Creativity has never been more important than now…the speed of innovation is getting faster and we need to keep up
• Idea-perception: the ability to see that the world is changing
• The book is not dead because of the ebook. People used to read books on the bus, on the plane, on vacation. Where do people read books now?
• We didn’t go from book to ebook, we went from book to social and digital media (mobile devices)
• The problem: Human beings are not very good at change
• Just because a man says something very confident doesn’t mean he’s right it just means he’s confident
• The people you are leading are stuck doing things the way they do because they’re doing it the way they were told to do it
• As leaders your job is to make your people more creative
• You don’t do it by talking about creativity or teaching creativity, you do it by doing creative things as a leader…they are inspired to be creative
• What is the most creative thing you can do as a leader?
• We are never closer to God than when we have a really, really, good idea.