Last Friday, the 4th OS ConJunction Students and Alumni Day took place at the Kaiser Leopold Saal at the University of Innsbruck. The theme for this year’s event was “Organizing Creativity and the Creativity of Organizing”.
After an introduction by Richard Weiskopf and Leonhard Dobusch, Birthe Soppe gave a talk on “How organizations make creativity valuable”. She provided insights from her empirical research on game development in the creative industry. She raised the topic of competing logics of market and creativity. This topic was revisited in a lively panel discussion, with five invited panelists, moderated by Katharina Zangerle.
David Prieth, artist, and Managing Director of PMK started the panel round with sharing his own creative process, as often spontaneous reactions to social political issues.
Andrei Siclodi, Director of Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen places great value on traveling and cultural exchange. The residency program in his organization offers artists and independent theorists the needed support to realize critically themed projects.
The need for “calmness, and stillness” to be creative was raised by Martina Ertl, Organizational Developer, Agile Coach at D. Swarovski KG. In answering audience questions with respect to Agile, she asserts that implementation of “self-empowered team” can be “human-oriented” to avoid the stress of constant multi-tasking.
Florian Ladstätter, Organizational Developer & Fundraiser at Die Bäckerei, who recently completed his PhD at the University of Innsbruck – School of Management, mentioned that he still sees with his “research goggles” on, and finds that “creativity can be a monster.” The challenge of not just be creative once, “but be creative all the time,” may be faced by creating “resonance” through collaboration.
Referring to the imperative of being creative, Maria Wieninger (OS Alumni), Consultant at Transformation Management GmbH asserts that, “you can’t force someone to be creative…. But you can set the frame for the possibility to do so.”
In the second half of the event, Leonhard Dobusch gave a warm welcome to his former colleague Elke Schüssler, University of Linz. She shared her research on “How creativity is organized”.
The formal part of the event was concluded by the graduation speech of the Master’s class of 2019.
As with previous years, the ConJunction Day continued with a more informal, but just as (if not more) important part at Brennpunkt Coffee Competence, with great food, drinks and conversations. A true ConJunction of different ideas, experiences and generations.
Like last year, we had about 110 participants. We are looking forward to welcome as many, or even more, next year. Stay tuned for the OS ConJunction Day 2020!
