Innovating Minds™ Program

“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you, and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.” (Steve Jobs; inventor; 1955–2011.)

To thrive in the global innovation economy, we need to develop Innovating Minds, in that we need to be creative thinkers and entrepreneurial doers who can collaborate, create, and implement new ideas that add relevant added value. We need to become skilled in identifying problems and opportunities, dreaming up and dialoguing possible solutions, elaborating and enhancing the best ideas, and applying and refining them in response to feedback. All of these skills can be taught and learned. We have great untapped potential to become more creative and to make the most of our creative, analytic, and practical abilities.

In this program, Marcus Conyers, the founder of the Center for Innovative Education and Prevention, and of InnovatingMinds.org shares his practical process of increasing the creative and critical thinking skills that are key to improving innovation. Grounded in mind, brain, and education science and current research on creativity, the program focuses on developing the cognitive assets and metacognitive skills that support innovative thinking and entrepreneurial doing. 

Some highlights about what participants in this program will learn include…

• Which combination of creative and critical thinking skills are essential today

• Key research findings on how the brain learns new skills

• How the Input Process Output process supports innovative thinking

• Which cognitive assets are critical to creative and critical thinking

• Keys to developing these cognitive assets

• How to develop the metacognitive skills that drive the creative process

• Current research on creativity and how to develop it

• Examples of Conyers’ IDEA model (Identify Dream Evaluate Apply) 

• How to apply the IDEA model