1st annual Symposium of the SEV Center of Excellence in Creative Leadership

Spreading novel trends, insights and practices

The purpose of the Center’s Annual Symposium is to spread novel, solid, and practice-relevant insights, trends, and practices about creative leadership.

The concept of the Annual Symposium combines three main elements: A fresh, cutting-edge idea on creative leadership, published in a premier international management research outlet no older than 5 years; Greek exemplars from carefully selected organizations who embody this idea; a stimulating dissemination of insights about the idea and its practical applications – and implications – around the globe and, most importantly, Greece.

The Symposium of the SEV Center of Excellence in Creative Leadership will take place on February 12, 2020, at the Lighthouse of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center. The event coincides with the Center’s one-year anniversary and features distinguished speakers from Greece’s leading industries. 

This year’s theme: Building prosperous organizations through creative Leadership

This year’s Symposium is themed around how creative leadership can help build prosperous organizations.  

Participants and speakers at the Symposium will share practice-relevant insights about best practices related to creative leadership internationally and in Greece.  

But what exactly do creative leaders do? As recent research suggests, depending on the characteristics of the business and professional context in which companies operate, creative leadership can appear in one of the following shapes or forms:

As facilitating. This is the common form of creative leadership across most industry sectors, whereby leaders tend to facilitate the creativity of the individuals and teams they manage.

As directing. This type of creative leadership is common in sectors where the creative identity of the product/service is key and creative leaders generate themselves a creative vision and direct others towards its materialization.

As integrating. In this type, creative leaders synthesize heterogeneous creative inputs into a final creative product or service. This form of creative leadership is more common in sectors where work is highly complex and interdependent.

Moreover, to monitor how creative leadership in Greece is delivered and practiced, the Center carries out an applied research to identify companies in Greece which:

(a) provide a work environment that systematically inspires and promotes creative behavior among a large number of their employees;

(b) offer products or services that carry the unique creative identity of a top leader or founder; or/and

(c)  produce complex products or services that integrate the creative work of various professionals. 

During the Symposium, participants will be exposed to the multifarious aspects of creative leadership in a variety of industries, from manufacturing to technology, to digital entrepreneurship, to creative economy (design, advertising, film production, fashion, film direction, gastronomy, etc.) and others, and will come to realize that, when done right, creative leadership can guarantee the growth, prosperity and longevity of companies and organizations.  

Download the Symposium's agenda (in Greek) here 

and the speakers Bios here

Register Online