March 21 - 23, 2007
with pre-Conference Institutes - March 20, 2007
in Austin, Texas
Nurturing Creative Teams -- Managing for Innovation
Assaf Avni
Instructor for Advertising Creativity / Doctoral Candidate
The University of Texas at Austin, College of Communication
The University of Texas at Austin / Advertising Department
1 University Station A1200 / Austin, TX 78712
512-762-8290 Mobile
creativity@mail.utexas.edu
http://www.creativi-t.com
Assaf Avni is an instructor for advertising creativity and
a doctoral candidate at the University of Texas at Austin.
He holds an MA in advertising from UT Austin and a BA in
advertising and graphic design from Michigan State University.
In addition to his academic path, Avni worked as an art director
and a web designer for a number of years and has recently
founded AdTIP.org, an online community dedicated to bridging
the gap between theory and practice in advertising. Avni
is currently researching management of creative teams and
is teaching creativity, theory and practice, at UT Austin.
His research interests over the past few years have been
in the areas of creative processes in teams, nurturing creativity
in teams and organizational innovation. For comments, questions
or suggestions, you can email Avni at: creativity@mail.utexas.edu
Nurturing Creative Teams -- Managing for Innovation
Gardner, Amabile and Csikszentmihalyi,
many theories on creativity and innovation have been developed
and explored over the years. Moving from theory to practice,
managers nowadays ask themselves: How do we manage for
risk-taking? Are we stimulating new ideas? Are new ways
of thinking welcome in our organization? How are we rewarding
for innovation? These and many other questions will be
explored in an interactive session. The session will challenge
the theoretical framework in a practical perspective and
will provide management tools for nurturing creativity
in teamwork.
At the end of my presentation, participants:
- Will have: a broader understanding of the theoretical
framework on creativity in the workplace.
- Will be able to identify innovative teams vs. productive
groups in their organization and to apply different management
styles that work well with either/both.
- Will have an Innovation Action Plan that they have created,
specifically to the team/organization they manage.
- Will acquire a set of management tools that will help
them nurture creativity and innovation in their organization/team.
All levels will find of interest and useful
The session format is a mix of presentation (Power Point
and movie clips) and a set of hands-on exercises.
