Creativity4Better. Human Creativity for Societal Change. Loredana Pădurean on creativity in high level education - Creativity4Better. Human Creativity for Societal Change.

Loredana Pădurean on creativity in high level education

Loredana Pădurean was one of the founding team members of Asia School of Business, in collaboration with MIT Sloan , in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The School acts like a start-up: constantly changing, constantly demanding.

Loredana got her hands on almost every task to be done, from operations to marketing, corporate development, curriculum design, regulatory processes, events, strategic development, teaching, executive education and more.

Loredana will be sharing with us her experience in an educational start-up backed up by a leading institution, MIT and how creativity plays a huge role in their operations, during the IAA Global Conference, 24-25 October, in Bucharest.

Until then, we’ve had a short, inspiring tete-a-tete with Loredana, on the power of creativity


What does creativity mean for you?

Curiosity with a purpose; with a productive and valuable output. My previous Dean used to say the most important quality for an academic is curiosity, always asking why, how, who, what. Creativity is taking curiosity further to something that will serve a community that will cultivate the world. It is a mission of service towards something bigger than just us.

If creativity is an unlimited resource, how do you harvest your team's creativity?

Creativity is unlimited only if there is intellectual freedom supported by a productive and collaborative goal driven process. I've seen companies like IDEO or MIT teach us that you can consistently be creative and produce unexpected, unconventional solutions when you bring in high level talent, remove traditional barriers of thinking and doing, and encourage an environment of intense collaboration and participation to the creative process. That's what I'm hoping to provide our teams.

Could you share a life story (personal or professional life) on how creativity improved the world? It could very well be a story of how an unconventional, "crazy idea" saved the day, a story on how lateral thinking helped you come up with a better solution.

When I joined ASB, this new start-up set up in collaboration with MIT Sloan, (Asia School of Business in Kuala Lumpur), we had an opportunity to create a whole new MBA experience, and start from scratch, free of legacy and of existing models. Of course we wanted an exceptional program but we quickly realized that we will need to be unconventional in design, setup, student profiles, etc.

So we came up with this idea of launching a global search for unconventional and exceptional students that don't fit the traditional MBA requirements but who have the emotional and intellectual intelligence to successfully perform in a rigorous environment, backed by relevant life and work experience. We asked these "unconventionals" to submit a 1 min video that would convince us of their exceptional (maybe less traditional backgrounds) and unconventional records of success and we ended up with outstanding talent such as a musician without a previous degree but with successful business experience, first hires in start-ups but without business backgrounds, a former US Marine and owner of the first Crossfit gym in Cambodia, an Ivy League graduate who wants to revolutionize the adult toy industry, and so many others.

So, we got creative and we got what we wanted. And more!