Jing Herman, Co-founder of 28Muses, led a live discussion about creativity in the workplace with Prof. Melanie Brucks of Columbia Business School.

We were so happy to see that 100% of the audience believed that creativity is something that can be learned, trained, and enhanced with experiences and practices.

Here are a few other takeaways:

1. Life is one big experiment! be playful! A/B test!

2. When you show people the output of what you're looking for or even suggest it, it drastically limits their imagination - creative flow requires giving the right amount of input with big big pictures goals and then let it be a green field of limitless possibilities

3. Creativity is needed for problem solving though research has shown a gender bias that creative problem solving is more associated with men and arts & crafts is associated with women (28Muses has some work cut out to level this bias)

4. Psychological safety is key for allowing creativity to flourish

5. Leadership needs to be aligned and create a culture of creativity (no shame or consequences if an idea fails)

The most important question - how can you convert creativity into something concrete to create value at the enterprise level?

That's the holy grail! Of course our answer would be that this is something that cannot be done overnight, an organization needs to invest in a culture of creativity where IRL/virtual events provide safe spaces for people to practice the expression of their uniquely human ideas in front of their managers and slow change corporate politics to reward creativity without indirectly punishing it.