What Can Five Wet Monkeys Teach Us About Creativity? August 25, 2011

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Complete video at: http://fora.tv/conference/chq_creativity_innovation

Col. Casey Haskins, an accomplished military officer and professor at West Point Academy, argues that one of the biggest obstacles to creativity is a reliance on the status quo. "We do lots of stuff that we have no idea why we do it, and we don't even bother to examine it, and in some instances, that does harm," explains Haskins.

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Sparking a Culture of Creativity and Innovation

Col. Casey Haskins, an extremely accomplished military officer and professor at West Point Academy, uses psychology, philosophy, and "out of the box thinking" to create a new train of thought for successful problem solving.

New ideas and new ways of looking may provide the answers to challenges to U.S. competitiveness in business, education, government, and health care. In this week, our guests will reveal how they have created cultures of creativity that foster innovation. We'll define "design thinking" and learn about collaborations that extend knowledge across disparate fields and add value to society, products and services. We will discover how creativity can be taught and learned, and how to inspire creative confidence in ourselves and others. - Chautauqua Institution

Col. Casey Haskins is director of the Department of Military Instruction at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, responsible for adapting military instruction to demands for more limber, creative operating methods. As profiled in the book Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries, by Peter Sims, Haskins oversees military tactics courses that West Point requires cadets to take during their first three years, and a three-month summer training program that emphasizes leadership, in which he and his colleagues construct immersion experiences to prepare cadets for what they'll encounter on modern battlefields.