Short Takes:
Inspiring talks about creativity, innovation and leadership

Linda Naiman is a frequent speaker at international conferences and business forums. These highly visual, interactive presentations are designed to inform, inspire and ignite creative thinking.

Creativity at Work: Principles and Practices derived from business, art and science.

Creativity is a core competency for leaders and managers, and a crucial component of the innovation equation. Creativity requires whole-brain thinking; right-brain imagination, artistry and intuition, plus left-brain logic and planning. Organizations led by creative leaders have a higher success rate in innovation, employee engagement, change and renewal.
Linda Naiman presents a rich tapestry of images, ideas and strategies used by leading innovators in business, art and science to inspire and inform you. This interactive presentation is designed to give you an overview of key principles and practices you can apply to cultivate your own creativity and to create a workplace environment where creativity and innovation flourish.

Art as Strategy

How can you use art to gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace? Linda Naiman presents a rich tapestry of art, images and ideas designed to inform and inspire. Discover the strategic ways art is being used in major organizations that transcend traditional roles of decoration and entertainment: Art as a branded experience, art as a means of spearheading social innovation and organizational change and art as a catalyst for creativity. What can we learn from the arts that we can apply to business?

Art and Power

Where there is power, there is art. Where there is art, there is power. Explore the relationship between art and power —in business, spirituality and social change, from the Renaissance to present day. In this workshop, Linda Naiman presents a tapestry of art, images and ideas designed to inform and inspire, interspersed with thought provoking questions and world café style dialogue.

We’ll discuss themes of power that have occurred in visual art from Michelangelo to Graffiti, how artists have changed our world view, and examine ways Popes, Kings, Queens, Emperors and corporate titans have used art to forward their agendas.

Alchemy of Leadership (Transformational Leadership)

Some of the greatest difficulties leaders face today revolve around the need to instill passion, mobilize teams toward achieving a common vision, and motivate change in employees. Organizations led by creative leaders have a higher success rate in innovation, employee engagement, change and renewal.

How do you transform the ordinary into the extraordinary? Alchemy is the art of transforming leaden thinking into the gold of wisdom. Immerse yourself in ideas, thinking processes and strategies used by leading innovators in business, art and science. Discover how art and design can be used as a catalyst for transformation and how collaborative thinking processes can lead to creative breakthroughs. Learn key principles, practices and tools you can apply to create a workplace environment where creativity and sustained innovation flourish.

Arts Expedition

Take a break from the usual meeting format at your off-site retreat and use your local gallery or museum as a venue to spark fresh thinking. According to Steve Zades, (ad agency CEO), “Contemporary art is the R&D lab of the future.” This expedition will teach you creative thinking techniques used by artists, scientists, inventors and entrepreneurs — the ability to see what others don’t see, connect seemingly unrelated data to gain fresh perspectives, and generate new ideas for innovation.

Design Thinking: A Strategy for Innovation

When design principles are applied to strategy and innovation the success rate for innovation dramatically improves.

Engineering, medicine, business, architecture, and painting are concerned not with the necessary but with the contingent—not how things are but how they might be—in short, with design. (Simon, 1996, p. xii.)
A design mind-set is not problem-focused, it’s solution focused, and action oriented. It involves both analysis and imagination in problem-solving. Design thinking is at the core of effective strategy development and organizational change.

Perception Reception

Magic tricks, puzzles, wine tasting, fractals, illusions and synaesthesia provide a multi-sensory entertaining and educational experience to kick start your meeting. In collaboration with Ken Bellmare, corporate trainer and magician.

Consider hiring Linda Naiman to speak at your next meeting.