Creative Day: a day dedicated to creativity in business
Unlocking your teams’ creative potential and transforming the business through imagination with Creative Day
- client request
In my conversations with several innovation directors from large companies such as Total, FDJ, BNP Paribas Cardif, Danone and Valrhona (among others), one theme kept coming back: a sense of isolation in their efforts to promote and embed a culture of innovation and creativity within their organisations.
Despite their influential positions, these leaders felt the need for a space where they could talk freely with their peers, share common challenges, discuss best practice and inspire each other.
These conversations made me realise that although these companies operate in different sectors, the innovation challenges they face are often similar. That is how the idea of a day given over entirely to curiosity and innovation was born: Creative-Day. The site is currently being rebuilt but you will find the archive here.
- challenges
To tackle the subject of creativity, I had to surprise, entertain and above all inspire. These days were designed as an exceptional platform where directors could share their experience and expertise, collaborate proactively to co-create forward looking solutions, and take part in workshops presenting new methods, tools and practices. Delivering that ambition meant meeting four major challenges:
Putting together a program that inspires and stimulates creativity
- Objective : to offer a setting that encourages interaction and creative awakening.
- Strategy : to plan each day with a carefully built program focused on engagement and interaction in order to stimulate creativity.
Bringing in speakers and creativity experts
- Objective : to enrich the discussion with concrete perspectives.
- Strategy : to invite speakers and creativity experts to share their knowledge and run hands on experimentation sessions.
Mobilising the key players in innovation
- Objective : to secure diverse and committed participation.
- Strategy : to encourage active participation from innovation leaders, HR teams, students and anyone else who wants to contribute to this initiative.
Offering a varied program of sessions
- Objective : to offer rich and varied content.
- Strategy : to organise sessions that combine new concepts and lessons from experience, in order to give a complete and nuanced view of creativity.
- stakes
To stimulate innovation, strengthen a culture of creativity and encourage a collaborative approach, the common challenges organisations face have to be addressed. Ultimately this initiative aims to establish an innovation ecosystem that is both dynamic and collaborative, where managers, employees and leaders from different sectors can come together to shape the future of innovation within their own companies.
Building creativity into company strategy
- Objective : to make creativity a strategic pillar.
- Strategy : to build creative methods and practices into the planning and delivery of company strategy.
Stimulating innovation for greater competitiveness
- Objective : to stay a step ahead in the market.
- Strategy : to invest in research and development, and to encourage the rapid adoption of innovative technologies and methods.
Promoting an open and collaborative company culture
- Objective : to create an inclusive working environment.
- Strategy : to put in place policies and practices that encourage collaboration between departments and a diversity of ideas.
Strengthening employee engagement
- Objective : to increase employee satisfaction, engagement and retention.
- Strategy : Recognise and reward creativity and innovation at every level of the organisation.
- solution
Community
Building a solid community around the Creative-Day concept.
By setting up a partnership with the Créapole design school to bring a new generation of creative thinkers into the discussion with established innovation professionals.
Organisation
Structuring the day so that interaction and learning flow continuously.
After putting together a program of plenaries and experimental workshops, we selected the experts, practitioners and enthusiasts to run them, along with actors, musicians and others.
Facilitation
Facilitation is the beating heart of any event. For Creative-Day, we made sure that every session was lively, inspiring and memorable.
Every talk and plenary is a learning experience that supports collaboration, sharing and discovery.
Experience
With continuous improvement at the centre of our approach, the feedback stage mattered a great deal.
By gathering feedback from participants, we were able to refine and adapt the format and the content of the event so that it better met their expectations for the following sessions.
- results
Over the three years "Creative Day" has existed so far, the event quickly became a fixture for professionals looking to stimulate their creativity and for companies wanting to strengthen their culture of innovation. With 500 people attending in total, the day has offered a unique platform for exchange, discovery and co-creation to many people looking to bring more creativity into their life and their business.
Participants had the chance to listen to and interact with 40 well known speakers, including figures such as Joël de Rosnay, Jacques, and Syd X Rey, a singer and quantum physics researcher at the CNRS. Thinkers and visionaries were not the only people who spoke. The creativity and innovation directors of large companies such as Fairphone, FDJ, BNP Paribas, Orange and Renault also shared their experiences, their challenges and their successes, which gave everyone practical perspectives they could apply.
The 20 workshops were key moments of the day. They let participants go deeper into specific subjects, work together in small groups and put the concepts from the talks into practice. These workshops were incubators for ideas, where theory met practice and where participants could experiment with, test and refine their innovative ideas.
Feedback from participants was extremely positive. Several of them identified innovative ideas ready to be put into practice in their own organisations. Those ideas, which came out of the discussions, exchanges and collaboration during "Creative Day", have the potential to transform companies and to add real value in the market. "Creative Day" went well beyond a one day event and delivered a transformational experience that left a lasting mark on participants and their companies.
TO ORGANISE A KEYNOTE, A WORKSHOP OR A MASTERCLASSÂ