CREA Conference

Casa
Italia
Sestri Levante
CREA Conference

The most important annual event in Europe devoted to creativity and innovation. Come to Crea and lea Starting 2020, a new partnership with Dynamo Academy!

Since 2003, every spring, CREA has been offering its unique blend of programs and workshops to professionals coming from all around the world. After 17 years in beautiful Sestri Levante, we are saying goodby to the Italian Riviera and moving to the heart of Tuscany.

27/08/2026

John Cleese put it simply, in a research report on creativity and business growth we've been reading: "Nothing will stop you being creative more effectively as the fear of making a mistake."

Fear kills ideas before anyone even says them out loud, but the same report makes a harder point, from creativity researcher Scott Berkun: "It's challenging to create a culture where there's just the right amount of creative friction."

That word, friction, is the part we don't talk about enough. Psychological safety was never about eliminating disagreement. For an idea to become genuinely good, it has to survive some pushback. Someone needs to be able to say "this isn't working yet" without the room going cold. Too little friction, and ideas stay half-formed — safe, but weak. Too much, and people simply stop bringing them.

This is where facilitators actually spend most of their time: not removing fear from a room, but calibrating how much resistance a group can hold before it shuts down.

What do you think about that?

Source: "Creativity as a Catalyst for Business Growth," Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, in association with Canva (2024).

25/08/2026

Almost every business leader believes creativity drives growth. Almost none call their organization "very successful" at actually doing it.

Research by Harvard Business Review Review Analytic Services, in association with Canva, makes a point worth repeating: creativity "isn't exclusive to typically creative professions." It runs through every part of a workforce, from the C-suite to the front line, not just design or marketing teams.

So what separates the organizations that close that gap from the ones that don't? Swipe through three things that quietly decide whether creative ideas survive inside an organization.

👉 We're curious how this plays out where you work… is creativity actually built into how decisions get made, or is it something people talk about and rarely act on? Let us know in the comments.

18/08/2026

CREAtive Riddles, round two! How did last week's lateral thinkers do?
Here's a new one to test your thinking 👇

A company brings a team a precise request: cut customer complaint response time from 48 to 24 hours. The team works a full day, generates dozens of proposals, tests them all. Their best result is 30 hours. Not enough.

Two months later, a second team receives the exact same request, no access to the first team's work, far less time (twenty minutes, not a full day), no additional information. In twenty minutes, they arrive at a solution under 12 hours.

Neither team was incompetent. How is this possible?

Guess in the comments, solution tomorrow.

14/08/2026

New on CREA channels: CREAtive Riddles: small, fun lateral thinking puzzles to shake off the August heat and the brain fog that comes with it.

👉 Scroll through the slides for the riddle, then drop your solution in the comments. We'll share the answer tomorrow.

11/08/2026

Curiosity might be the key to navigating complexity, but only if we practice it with real consistency, not just chase the first spark.

A recent study on curiosity states that we light up easily. What we struggle with is going beyond that first spark, staying in the moment right after, when things stop being predictable.

That's exactly what facilitation is built to do.

👉 When a group stalls right after that first spark of interest, what's the one thing you reach for first?

04/08/2026

Creativity means creating contexts where people can think differently.

That idea runs through everything CREA does, and it's exactly what Alessia Berti , part of CREA since 2012, brings to her work as a facilitator and career coach.
Alessia also built the bridge between CREA and the bringing to life conference bags that are ethical, inclusive, and sustainable, unique and different every year. The project sparked creativity even within the Reds of CREA, the amazing logistics team, who decorated the bags by hand, making each one one-of-a-kind.

Through hands-on workshops, CREA participants leave with concrete inspiration, a shift in how they approach problems, and tools they can actually use.

Check the full article (in Italian): https://www.spazio3r.org/post/dalla-creativit%C3%A0-all-azione-la-collaborazione-a-crea-conference

👉 What context helped you think differently, once? A room, a person, an exercise...tell us in the comments.

28/07/2026

A story that stuck with us, from a conversation between Robert Cserti (co-founder of SessionLab ) and facilitator Sam Moon on the Facilitation Stories podcast.

Robert recalled being part of a workshop years ago, run by someone officially billed as a "trainer." It took him a long time to realize what actually happened in that room wasn't training at all, but pure process facilitation, helping a team align, understand each other, surface friction, and build trust, mostly through hands-on work rather than instruction.

We think about this mismatch a lot.

Often the people who commission a workshop, don't yet have the language for what they're actually asking for. They book "training" when what their team needs is space to be heard.

This is also, we think, why facilitation is no longer a niche skill for professional facilitators alone. As Robert put it, it's becoming one of the future super skills at workplaces for managers, for leaders, for anyone who has to get a group of people to actually move forward together, not just sit through a meeting.

Leadership today asks people to create space for real input, not just deliver decisions. That's a facilitation skill, whether or not it's ever named as one.

In your experience as a facilitator, what do you think?

Thank you to Robert Cserti and SessionLab for the inspiration behind this reflection. Full episode here: https://facilitationstories.libsyn.com/fs83-facilitation-as-a-super-skill-with-robert-csert

24/07/2026

Not every event earns a spot on your calendar.

Some leave you with a folder of slides you'll never open again. Others have a transformative power that lasts long after they're over.

Swipe through to see what we mean, and if you've already had the chance to take part in CREA Conference, tell us in the comments what made it worth it for you.

📅 Next CREA Conference: April 14–18, 2027, Sestri Levante (Italy)

20/04/2026

That’s a wrap on CREA 2026!

We took off on Wednesday evening.
Destination: clear. Purpose: to train our creative thinking skills together.

We landed on Sunday with something none of us had quite planned for: new collaborations, new friendships, hard questions, and for many, a shift in professional and personal direction.

In 4 days, we built the kind of climate that most organizations spend years trying to create through change management processes.

This is what CREA does.
The warmth of this creative learning community is now travelling across Europe and beyond, carrying seeds of change.

Thank you everyone!

16/04/2026

The team has been building this moment for months, and now it’s yours!

Yesterday afternoon, familiar faces and new ones arrived at Sestri Levante.

That particular energy that only happens when people who care about the same things find themselves in the same room.

And today? A full day of Morning programmes and workshops. This is . We’re so glad you’re here!

Indirizzo

Sestri Levante

Sito Web

https://creaconference.com/

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