Welcome Notes

Tania de Jong AM, Founder & Executive Producer Ci2011

Welcome to Creative Innovation 2011. After the overwhelming success of our inaugural event in 2010, I am excited and delighted to invite you to join us at the Paris-end of Melbourne this spring. The theme of Ci2011 is “The challenges and opportunities of a super-connected world”.

This very important conversation is designed to bring about a manifesto for change in ourselves, our organisations, our communities and our world.

Ci2011 will be a place to connect, create, change, explore, question, share and learn. A place to be entertained and inspired. A place to re-invent the future. The event is bringing together the diverse voices of some of the leading speakers, thinkers, entrepreneurs, innovators, educators and leaders in our world today. Ci2011 is an international community-wide, cross-sector program.

We believe our program is important for anyone interested in leading change and achieving business success as creativity and innovation are the strategic tools for our future. The recent IBM CEO Global Study, which surveyed 1500 CEOs, identified creativity as the most important leadership attribute over the next 5 years in an increasingly complex global environment.

Unleashing our creative leadership potential in a world that spins ever faster is essential to bring forward innovative solutions at an individual and collective level to meet the challenges and opportunities we face.

Our voice is symbolic of who we are. Transformation is truly possible when we find and enlarge our own voice and build bridges of understanding, not walls between us. We can then celebrate our diverse voices and come together as one for the common good.

This is a rare opportunity to learn, connect and share ideas across sectors with some of the world’s most influential thinkers under one roof. As John M.Richardson Jr. said: “When it comes to the future, there are three kinds of people: those who let it happen, those who make it happen, and those who wonder what happened.” Please come along and make it happen! This promises to be another unforgettable experience.

Hugh Morgan AC – Ambassador Ci2011

A super-connected world spinning ever faster…where are we heading? This is a unique opportunity to engage with extraordinary people whose life has been transformed by turning good ideas into something useful. Success in doing so is an art not a prescription and the recognition and adaption of this is a prerequisite condition for a community to be successful innovators and deal with constant change. Our need to make that transition has never been greater. This great symposium is a very special opportunity not to be missed.

Sir Gustav Nossal AC, CBE, FRS, FAA – Ambassador Ci2011

Over the years I have learnt to value individual and collective creativity and innovation; be it working with wonderful scientists at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute or working with Bill and Melinda Gates on their global health initiatives.  As a central core through all of this, I know the value of  people’s minds, opportunities for collaboration and cross-pollination of diverse ideas. Creative Innovation 2011 is an outstanding opportunity to enable all of these three important factors. Stunning minds such as Raymond Kurzweil and Daniel Dennett, a wonderful opportunity for collaboration in a very conducive environment which also uses the arts and music to facilitate openness, and finally great diversity of thought across a myriad of sectors and activities.

We are truly blessed to have such an opportunity on our doorstep, here in Australia and Melbourne, to enable all of this to come together. Congratulations to all involved in helping to make it a wonderful success and I hope it will go on for many years and grow larger and more successful in the international context. I look forward to your support, attendance, thoughts and collaboration.

Professor Allan Fels AO – Ambassador Ci2011

“Anthropologists tell us our brains are hard-wired to be natural story telling machines; 70% of what we learn is through stories. In the 21st century we have entered an age of Giant Stories: stories that cross the world in an instant, stories that can touch and involve billions of people. The opportunities are immense and liberating, but many of the challenges are the ones that come from our own hard-wired stock of negative stories, stories about strangers to be feared, habits to be clung to and new opportunities to be resisted. My wish for the participants at Ci2011 is that you can come together to create the optimistic new stories of our super-connected time and place.”

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