Cultivating creative thinking: stories from the field

Learning to think and work across disciplines is an important 21st century skill for organizations and individuals. For decades, SIGGRAPH has been bringing together computer scientists and artists, serving as a corpus collosum for these so-called left-brain and right brain communities. Creative collaborations within productive teams have been critical for many success stories in our industry. Cultivating cross-disciplinary thinking within an organization is hard to achieve given the traditional tendency to separate the arts and sciences in the culture at large. Creative thinking on the part of an individual can spark invention and lead innovation. The ability to see connections, articulate a vision and approach old problems from new angles holds the potential to tackle larger intractable challenges or spawn new industries. This panel convenes notable exemplary individuals from industry and academia to share first hand accounts for how they do what they do and what they see as the most importance factors, organizationally and individually, to achieve creative excellence.

This panel, including artists, engineers, patent-holders, inventors, and academics, will reflect on personal experiences to address a variety of questions personal and grand. How do we set up organizations and interactions to enable creativity to develop and to work effectively as creative communities? How do you recognize, assess and nurture creativity in an individual? What educational experiences best prepare a rising generation to be an innovative and creative workforce? What lessons learned in your own domains might be applied to other problem domains? What, if any, political, cultural, and educational changes would you wish for to facilitate your work? Panel members will be asked to respond to topics such as these, to share personal experiences regarding their own creative process and to respond to attendees inquiries in a question and answer portion at the end of the panel.