World Creativity and Innovation Celebrations

Introduction

When the headline “Canada in Creativity Crisis” appeared in the National Post on May 25, 2001, Marci Segal was inspired to change the general thinking around creativity (World Creativity & Innovation Week (WCIW), 2021). Having studied at the International Center for Studies in Creativity at Buffalo State University, she understood the power of creativity and people’s natural creative ability. Segal knew that solving the creativity crisis in Canada would entail first finding the problem, brainstorming to find ideas, deciding on the best ones, and taking new action based on the ideas generated, which would positively minimize the country’s creativity crisis. She felt that increasing the awareness of the power of creativity could be achieved by establishing a creativity day to be celebrated worldwide, similar to the global celebrations at the turn of the millennium, and thus World Creativity and Innovation Day (WCID) was born. The main idea behind this day was to push countries into creative multidisciplinary thinking at both individual and group levels. Through collaboration, countries could celebrate creativity and innovation internationally to inspire and enable people to build better communities, countries, and the world together (WCIW, 2021).

WCID garnered the attention of the United Nations (UN), which agreed with Segal that creativity and innovation can change the world for the better for all, and so the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution to celebrate WCID annually in 2017. WCID is celebrated every year on April 21. Collaboration between various countries can help to develop better solutions to global problems. Albrectsen (2017) states that collaboration among governments, businesses, civil societies, and academia will be the key to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as set out by the UN, in 2030. The world has to collaborate more using rapid technological advances to offer new opportunities and new solutions. Albrectsen explains that this sounds easy; however, it is very complicated to get different countries and sectors to be openminded to collaboration, not be afraid to take risks, to cooperate in new ways, and to share experiences with other countries and sectors to work together more effectively. Bulche (2017) agrees that the world needs to work together to achieve sustainable development, including solving wicked and super wicked problems.

The world faces wicked and super wicked problems such as inequality, persisting poverty and hunger, the effects of climate change on the most vulnerable, biodiversity and keystone species loss, and food insecurity, to name a few (Walls, 2018). Wicked problems are difficult to solve, and super wicked problems even more so. Wicked problems can be described as problems that can be defined and explained in multiple ways; there is no one solution; solutions are either good or bad and can lead to unexpected and irreversible consequences over time. Wicked problems, such as the UN’s 17 SDGs, seem almost impossible to solve.

Nestlé, according to Bulche (2017), suggested three ideas that encourage collaboration in the world to achieve the SDGs. For starters, each company (or country or sector) must identify areas in which they can have the most impact on the 17 SGDs; for example, higher education (HE) institutions can focus on education (the fourth most crucial SGD) and hospitals can focus on health (the third most important SDG). Then, each company (country or sector) should leverage their specific comparative advantage to positively impact the SDG (or SDGs) they have selected. What will be critical is that the impact should include global implementation capacity, efficiency in execution, innovation and research capabilities, and performance efficiency. After that, the most vital issue is to think beyond one’s own company, country, or sector to observe, appreciate and collaborate to make the interconnected world a better place for all.