CREATIVE RESILIENCE
LEADING IN AN AGE OF DISCONTINUITY
It’s the word of the moment—resilience—and there’s little wonder why. In the past three years, a brutal pandemic and its economic fallout have knocked the world to its knees. Across many months, policymakers have responded in inconsistent, politicized ways as workplaces were shuttered, supply chains were shattered, and people suffered blows to their physical health, mental well-being, and financial security. Our ability to snap back to productive rhythms, systems, and ecosystems has depended—and still depends—on our personal and organizational capacities for resilience.
Yet, resilience can also carry a backward-looking sense that doesn’t feel sufficient to the moment. In many ways, our constantly, dynamically changing context has lurched ahead, and we must accomplish more than a return to the status quo ante. The challenge is to come back from setback stronger—with a revised understanding of societies and markets and a greater capacity to rise to future challenges.
We need a resilience that is forward-looking—that is fundamentally creative.
In choosing the theme of “Creative Resilience” we are not expressing nostalgic yearning to go back to the past. No CEO should be, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, closing her eyes and repeating “there’s no place like home.” Does our new term bring to mind another famous one: creative destruction? If so, good (and appropriate for a conference inspired by Peter Drucker, whose family counted Joseph Schumpeter as a friend). But note the twist, in joining Schumpeter’s call for creative dynamism we are also optimistic that organizations need not be destroyed in the process. A well-led enterprise can learn to survive deep blows and still surge forward.
This year’s conference will explore what it means to build creative resilience as a capacity—as a new set of reflexes at every level of the organization, and throughout its ecosystem of suppliers, customers, and other partners. We’ll draw on real-world stories and research findings from multiple disciplines to spur creative dialogue in Vienna—and new insights for us all for preparing our teams and institutions for future waves of disruption.
Join us in this important effort to bring innovation to the very core of how institutions are managed.