If you are in the D.C. area, and are interested in learning how to apply the GameChangers principles and other techniques for fostering creativity in the workplace, you’ll want to check out the Creativity in Business Conference.  It is being organized by our friend, Michelle James, and her Center for Creative Emergence.  I’m conducting a GameChangers session there, and moderating the plenary panel discussion, which will be all about improvisation in business.

Michelle has been teaching the principles of improvisation in business for a number of years.  She has assembled a stellar line-up of presenters who are aligned in the belief that creativity is the secret to a rich and satisfying working life, and to the necessary transformation of American business.  The Industrial Age models won’t cut the mustard in a Networked Economy.

I’m hoping to learn at least as much as I teach.

No sector needs more applied creativity and innovation than the federal government.  Obama and the Executive Branch can’t do it alone.   Today, through the lens of the health care debate, it’s easy to see the divide between the fearmongers clinging to a status quo in which insurance companies and big pharma control the U.S. healthcare system…and the champions of change who understand that we cannot continue to go down a path that puts so many barriers between health care providers and patients.

When the providers themselves want reform, you know something is screwy with the current system.  Yet so many people are afraid of change.  Of the unknown.  Here’s the insight for those people:  In resisting change and clinging to the past, you are guaranteeing your own irrelevance.

This is where creativity plays such a huge role in productive change.  Creativity is all about stepping confidently into the unknown, of facing the blank canvas of the future with the skill and preparation to turn it into a remarkable confluence of art and commerce.  It means confronting one’s fears instead of withdrawing from them.

If the objective (as in this instance) is better health care for more Americans, we have unlimited opportunities to make moves in that direction.  But we’re only going to make the moves when we realize that the process can be its own reward, and that in the process, we will discover the options and opportunities that will never come our way when we are ruled by our fear and frozen by our uncertainty.

Make your move, D.C.!  Sign up today!  (before Aug. 31, you get a nice discount)  See you there!