The CREO Institute was established to address the ever growing need for individuals to understand and apply their creative potential and skills, personally, professionally, and as members of society. This is the focus of our creativity workshops.

Personal Need

We all want to succeed in our lives. Whether it is as professionals, students, parents, teachers, artists, members of our communities, or in other areas of our lives, we want to make a difference and thrive. Our ability to be successful and happy in our increasingly complex world is dependent on our capacity to be reflective, flexible and open to new ideas and perspectives. Because of the complexity of life today, many people also find themselves on a quest for deeper meaning and impact, both in their personal and work lives. If we develop our creative skills, we can make improvements and positive changes in our lives and often accomplish goals that we may never before have believed possible.

Business Need

This is also a time of great and continuous change in the business world. Powerful improvements in technology are completely eliminating certain types of jobs and work. As discussed by Thomas Friedman in The World is Flat (2005), the business world continues to experience increasing competition, globalization and trends towards outsourcing and off shoring. As this occurs, and transactional and service jobs continue to be moved overseas, the nature of many of the jobs that remain within the U.S. and other developed nations is undergoing a transformation and will require a very different skill set (i.e. creativity, innovation, entrepreneurship, and leadership skills).

This is the context within which we are living, working, and developing ourselves for success as leaders in the business and professional world. Focusing on the science of management and business, emphasizing analysis and technique, is no longer sufficient. Henry Mintzberg (2004) discusses how MBA and other education programs are failing to develop the interpersonal and creative "soft skills" in students and their ability to engage in self reflection to become truly effective leaders. He notes that many organizations today are seeking individuals who have strong creative and artistic skills and thus the ability to approach business problems with uncommon, distinctive approaches. Subsequently some of the top organizations are recruiting individuals with art instead of business backgrounds. For many organizations, "the MFA (Master's in Fine Arts) is the new MBA" (Mintzberg, p. 41).

The Needs of Society and the Global Community

As a global community, we are facing some critical issues in terms of overpopulation, lack of clean and sufficient water, energy, and food resources, and environmental degradation. When we consider the incredible number of people in the world who are malnourished and who do not have access to clean drinking water, the countless species that are in danger of becoming extinct on a daily basis, and the increasing global warming trend, just to name a few of our pressing problems, we can no longer afford to look the other way. We need to take a stand and make significant changes immediately. We need to use our creative skills and resources to find the solutions that will help us to achieve the balance between progress and taking care of our world, and the people and creatures that live in it.

Given our aspirations in our personal lives, the ongoing revolutions in business, and the dire need for change that exists in the world, there is a call for us to develop our unique creativity, what Daniel Pink (2005) calls "high concept" and "high touch". He describes these capabilities beautifully. "High concept involves the capacity to detect patterns and opportunities, to create artistic and emotional beauty, to create a satisfying narrative, and to combine seemingly unrelated ideas into something new", and "high touch involves the ability to empathize with others, to understand the subtleties of human interaction, to find joy in one's self and elicit it in others, and to stretch beyond the quotidian in pursuit of purpose and meaning" (p. 2-3).