Linda Naiman is the founder of Creativity at Work, a company that helps organizations develop creativity, innovation, and leadership capabilities, through coaching, training and consulting.

Linda’s first career was as a design consultant in marketing communications. She explains how a severe creative block led her to study creativity as a process for generating ideas—she couldn’t believe she had never  been taught this during six years of study at art and design schools. However, she was taught to be a multi-disciplinary thinker, and began to explore questions such as, “What is the connection between art and leadership?” and “What we can learn from art that we can apply to business?”

She started pioneering arts-based learning for business in 1995. Since then she worked with organizations such as Cisco Systems, Dell International, Intell, American Express, RBC, and the US Navy. In 2011, IBM recognized Linda as a creative leader in business.

In this interview we talk about initiatives that bring art-based learning, art making and even art curating in the business world and how Linda’s mission is to liberate creativity at work, and make life, and work, a work of art.

 

Art resources that Linda says we should know about:

 

Margie Gillis Internationally acclaimed choreographer and dancer Margie Gillis has been creating original works for over forty years. In 1979, she became the first modern dance artist to perform and teach in China after the Cultural Revolution. https://www.cbc.ca/arts/exhibitionists/dance-is-a-language-and-icon-margie-gillis-is-teaching-her-vocabulary-to-a-new-generation-1.5122690

Maudie, the life of folk artist Maud Lewis, who painted in Nova Scotia about Lewis character exemplifies  “tenacious optimism”— despite living conditions given her arthritis,  abusive husband and poverty — and shows the power and significance of making art

https://www.npr.org/2017/06/19/532916596/maudie-made-such-joyful-art-youd-never-guess-how-tough-she-had-it 

Let the Elephants Run • Unlock Your Creativity and Change Everything By David Usher, Juno award-winning musician, keynote speaker to corporations,and founder of Reimagine AI, an artificial intelligence creative studio working with companies like Google Brain https://www.davidusher.com

In the intro (available in the premium version of the interview on Patreon) Linda mentioned:

 Research about innovators by Clayton Christensen.com

In the public version of the podcast here are the various books that were mentioned:

The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron

Artful Creation: Learning-Tales of Arts-in-Business by Lotte Darsø

Orchestrating Collaboration at Work By Arthur B VanGundy and Linda Naiman

Also you can look at these links:

The Osborn-Parnes Project

The Whole Brain Thinking Framework by Ned Herrmann

You can also browse posts that feature books here:

 https://www.creativityatwork.com/category/creativity-and-innovation/books-creativity-innovation-leadership/

 

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