Creativity and Aesthetics in Organisations

Introduction

Creativity is no longer a “nice-to-have” skill - it is a core business capability.
In a world marked by rapid change, uncertainty, and increasing complexity, organizations need people who can think differently, collaborate creatively, and design innovative solutions that actually work.
This course invites students on an interactive journey into how creativity really works in organizations - not only in creative industries, but in any business context: from startups and consultancies to large corporations, public organizations, and NGOs.
Rather than treating creativity as a mysterious talent or a purely individual skill, the course explores creativity as a manageable, learnable, and designable process. Students will discover how creativity emerges (or gets blocked) through everyday organizational dynamics such as leadership styles, team interactions, organizational culture, and the physical and social work environment.
A distinctive feature of this course is its aesthetic perspective on organizations. Students will learn how concrete organizational elements - such as workspace design, physical settings, artifacts, and interaction patterns - influence how people think, collaborate, and innovate at work. This perspective offers powerful and unconventional tools for understanding organizations and for proposing targeted interventions that enhance creativity and innovation.
The course combines theory with hands-on experiences. Through real cases, visual materials, group work, creative exercises, and a multimedia project, students will actively experiment with creative methods and learn how to translate ideas into concrete organizational improvements.
By the end of the course, students will not only understand what creativity is, but will also be able to analyze real organizational situations, diagnose creativity-related challenges, and propose feasible, innovative solutions - skills that are highly valuable across industries and career paths.

Why choose this course?
This course is ideal for students who want to stand out in future workplaces by developing creative confidence and a deeper understanding of how organizations actually work - beyond spreadsheets, formal structures, and standard management tools.

Throughout the course, students will:

• Learn how creativity and innovation function in real organizational contexts
• Develop practical tools for innovation, problem-solving, leadership, and collaboration
• Gain insight into how leadership, culture, and work practices shape creative processes
• Experience creative and aesthetic methods used by consultants, designers, and leaders
• Work on real organizational cases and produce a multimedia project
• Build skills that are highly relevant for careers in business, consulting, entrepreneurship, and leadership

This elective offers a hands-on, reflective, and engaging learning experience for students who want to better understand organizations as living, creative systems - and to actively shape them.

Course content

• Foundations of creativity in organizational contexts
• Individual creativity: motivation, skills, and enabling conditions
• Creativity in teams: collaboration, leadership, and group dynamics
• Creativity at the organizational level: structures, processes, and routines
• Organizational culture and its role in supporting or constraining creativity
• Work environments and organizational design as drivers of creative processes
• From creativity to innovation: implementation and organizational impact
• Creativity audit: evaluating and improving creative conditions in organizations

Disclaimer

This is an excerpt from the complete course description for the course. If you are an active student at BI, you can find the complete course descriptions with information on eg. learning goals, learning process, curriculum and exam at portal.bi.no. We reserve the right to make changes to this description.