Responding to corporate America's obsession with “innovation,” an international not-forprofit
arts think tank in Charlotte, N.C. has launched a program that corporate executives say
has the potential for unleashing creativity in virtually any organization.

The Innovation Institute at the McColl Center for Visual Art (named for retired Bank of
America CEO Hugh McColl) has produced more than 50 graduates over the past two years, the
majority of whom have become disciples for a program that brings artists and corporate
executives together to foster greater individual and organizational creativity.

“Before attending the Institute, I was squashing creative ideas from my employees by
always laying out the answers for them rather than giving them the time and the space they
needed to be creative,” said Jason Ward, formerly director of the eCommerce Interactive Design
Group for Wachovia and recently promoted to a new position, director of innovation for
Wachovia, one of the nation’s largest banks.

“Now, I allow people to incubate ideas in a way that I wouldn’t have done before,” Ward
said. “I am better able to see the potential in ideas and give people the space they need to work
on them. A recent project in which we used this approach resulted in a patent.”

Ward is typical of the corporate executives who have taken part in the program, which
consists of six alternate all-day Friday seminars under the tutelage of professional painters, sculptors, graphic artists, photographers, print makers and facilitators. Each session is based on
a theme, such as “Unlocking the Creative Voice,” “Pushing the Edge” and “The Value of Failure.”
Through presentations, discussions and hands-on exercises, participants from for-profit
businesses and not-for-profit organizations gain insights into the artistic creative process,
connect with their own creative abilities and explore elements required to foster creative
cultures within their own organizations.

“In the typical corporate process you spend a great deal of time analyzing a problem in a
logical manner until you run up against the question – ‘just what action should we take?’” said
Bob Bertges, director of corporate real estate for Wachovia. “It’s at this point that someone says
we need to get creative. The Innovation Institute changes your mindset – you realize that you
should be creative first and then test your innovative ideas against logic.”
The Innovation Institute is the brainchild of Suzanne Fetscher, a master of fine arts graduate
and president of the McColl Center. She relocated to Charlotte about nine years ago and began
to consider how the city’s high-powered corporate culture could be brought into closer contact
with the uptown McColl Center.

“I started to think about my own creative process and how I am constantly challenged to
stretch my vision, be rigorously disciplined, research, display courage and work hard,” Fetscher
said. “All of these elements can be applied to business. Visual artists have a lot to say about
innovation and creativity; it was just no one was asking them until now.”

Participants in the Innovation Institute are often surprised to learn that artists follow a
highly disciplined approach to creativity, using elements that can be applied to the business
world. Institute graduates experience first hand the open, emotional connection that artists
make with their work, along with a willingness to experiment with new ideas and to fail
repeatedly before discovering a truly innovative solution.

“Life beats the creativity out of people – suppresses the creativity that everyone has,” said
Shaun Cassidy, a sculptor who leads programs in the Institute. “I am amazed at how alive an
Innovation Institute group becomes and how incredibly receptive people can be to taking risks
in such an open environment.”

During his sessions, Cassidy shares information about his personal and professional life as
well as his creative process.

“I use my work as examples of things that may have seemed at one time to be a dead end, but
ended up being very relevant later on,” he said. “You have to respect a creative feeling and keep
following it. I hope that people come away from my sessions with the ability to think differently.”
The value of the Institute in unleashing a corporate executive’s innovative spirit has as much
to do with the interaction with artists and facilitators as it does with the interaction among
participants themselves, typically senior executives with major corporations and not-for-profit
agencies. The Institute focuses on recruiting corporate leaders whose insights into the creative
process can have ripple effects over an entire corporation.

“This program allows you to form relationships with other people that are based, not on
titles, but on the essence of who you are and who they are,” Bertges said. “I shared more with
my Institute group of who I am than I had ever shared at work. My goal now is to get people to
break down barriers and work as a team.”

Vicky Taylor, an Institute facilitator, says insights gained through the program stick with
participants because it reaches them on an emotional level.

“When you experience this program it’s unavoidable what you learn and it sticks with you,”
she said. “At the end of one session a CEO in the program looked around the room and said, ‘I
noticed that all of our titles and hierarchies disappeared during this project and I listened to you
in a way that I never would have listened to anyone at work. Our outcome was greater than
anything that I could have done alone, and I want this feeling to live on once I get back to work.’”
Anyone who applies to the Innovation Institute is asked to complete a questionnaire and
participate in a telephone interview with an Institute facilitator, such as Gay Baynes, a program
leader who has been instrumental in the creation and refinement of the Institute.

“We connect with our participants before they attend the Institute because we want to
emphasize that our program is not a traditional ‘chalk and talk’ experience,” Baynes said.
“Institute participants should be prepared to re-frame how they think about creativity so that
they become innovation leaders within their respective organizations. Our goal is to have
graduates who leave the Institute with the mindset needed to foster a culture shift for their
colleagues, resulting in opportunities for ongoing creativity by every team member.”

Based on its success thus far, the Institute is adding to its offerings. In addition to the current
program of six alternate Friday sessions, it will begin an intensive week-long program this spring, which should appeal to executives from outside the Charlotte region. The Institute is also offering custom one- and multi-day group programs for individual corporations and not-for-profit organizations.

“While executives come to the Institute to learn from artists, the program has led to a
sharing of information and the breaking of stereotypes on both sides,” Fetscher said. “Through
the Institute, we are creating peer-to-peer relationships between artists and business executives
for mutual learning. Artists and business people have more in common than they think.”