What does, at its core, a professional association do?

Why do they exist?

I am talking about marketing associations, professional speakers’ associations, HR associations, and similar organizations.

It’s easy to say: “to provide networking opportunities for peers”, “to facilitate knowledge exchanges”, “to provide inspiration”, or “to share industry trends that help its members grow.”

All of this is, of course, correct. But if you could only use one description, which one would you use?

The ability to put a word on what you really do is crucial.

When you find the perfect description, you get clarity.

With the exact right description, you get the right perspective on yourself.

And when you have clarity of thought, creativity and action can thrive.

If the description is just slightly off, you risk derailing your direction and your focus.

Just being a bit off can make you very lost.

The problem is that putting the right description on what you do is harder than most people understand.

I recently got the chance to discuss this topic with Even Bolstad, the Managing Director of HR Norge, Norway’s leading professional association for human resources and people management professionals.

In an intense conversation, I pushed him to describe what HR Norge does in just a couple of words.

He replied: “We are takeaway scouts.”

And with those few words, he nailed the reason for being a professional association.

The members of HR Norge come to the association’s events because they want to learn new things, pick up best practices, and get inspired to develop themselves and/or their organizations.

And to give value to its membership, HR Norge needs to deliver that at just the right level.

People come to their conferences to get valuable takeaways – something of value that they can take home and use in their lives, profession, or organization.

Yes, HR Norge also provides networks, courses, and webinars. They also provide insights through reports and surveys and have a clear voice in the public debate. But conferences have been their flagship products. And through all of the different offerings, the aim is to scout out takeaways.

Even, who has been at the helm of HR Norge since its start 24 years ago, has grown the association to the third largest HR association in Europe – impressive, since Norway is quite a small country. And the events at HR Norge are widely considered to be some of the best, if not the best, HR conferences in Europe.

Clearly, Even and his team are onto something.

If you run a professional association, are you looking at yourself as takeaway scouts?

What would change if you did?

And if you are in another profession, how would you describe in a couple of words what you do in a way that gives total clarity?

The post The Creativity Suite. Episode 166: Creativity is clarity of thought first appeared on The Creativity Explorer.

A few days ago I was in Norway and learnt about the Norwegian word “Nyvinning”.

It is the Norwegian word that covers the intersection between innovation, novelty, breakthrough, advance, and new development.

The Norwegian word has a profound meaning that these English words lack.

“Nyvinning” is made up of the word “ny” meaning “new”, and the word “vinning” meaning “winning”.

So, in Norwegian, when you innovate something you are “winning something new”!

A poetic interpretation of the word “Nyvinning” could be: “When the future wins over the past.”

NewWinning – which really should be the English word for “innovation” – is a better word for what innovation is, since it highlights that by doing something new we benefit and we win by doing that.

Nyvinning shows that an idea has beaten the old ways of doing something.

I learnt about this positive word in a discussion with Erling Moen Synnes, Chief Information Officer at DNO, one of Norway’s oldest and most internationally active oil and gas companies.

Erling is passionate about human growth, both for himself and for the people who work with him. At DNO he has worked in extreme situations – like oil fields in Northern Iraq or the rough seas of the North Atlantic. Regardless where he has worked, his mission has been to make other people reach their potential.

He said to me: “If you (as a leader) are responsible for other people, then it is your responsibility to move them to a new place. A better place. If someone who works for me says ‘I now dare to do things I did not dare to do before’, then I am happy”.

Erling is worried that we are losing our potential as people are too focused on just following procedures and processes. Not that procedures and processes are not important – they are, perhaps especially in the oil and gas industry – but we need people to think beyond that.

We need people to look for new ways to do things. Better ways of doing things.

We need the future to beat the present.

We need NewWinnings.

The post NewWinnings – The Norwegian word for innovation. (Episode 165) first appeared on The Creativity Explorer.

One of the things I love about exploring human creativity across the globe is how slight differences in how different languages describe the creative process can gift you with new insights into how creativity works.

A few days ago I was in Norway and learnt about the Norwegian word “Nyvinning”.

It is the Norwegian word that covers the intersection between innovation, novelty, breakthrough, advance, and new development.

The Norwegian word has a profound meaning that these English words lack.

“Nyvinning” is made up of the word “ny” meaning “new”, and the word “vinning” meaning “winning”.

So, in Norwegian, when you innovate something you are “winning something new”!

A poetic interpretation of the word “Nyvinning” could be: “When the future wins over the past.”

NewWinning – which really should be the English word for “innovation” – is a better word for what innovation is, since it highlights that by doing something new we benefit and we win by doing that.

Nyvinning shows that an idea has beaten the old ways of doing something.

I learnt about this positive word in a discussion with Erling Moen Synnes, Chief Information Officer at DNO, one of Norway’s oldest and most internationally active oil and gas companies.

Erling is passionate about human growth, both for himself and for the people who work with him. At DNO he has worked in extreme situations – like oil fields in Northern Iraq or the rough seas of the North Atlantic. Regardless where he has worked, his mission has been to make other people reach their potential.

He said to me: “If you (as a leader) are responsible for other people, then it is your responsibility to move them to a new place. A better place. If someone who works for me says ‘I now dare to do things I did not dare to do before’, then I am happy”.

Erling is worried that we are losing our potential as people are too focused on just following procedures and processes. Not that procedures and processes are not important – they are, perhaps especially in the oil and gas industry – but we need people to think beyond that.

We need people to look for new ways to do things. Better ways of doing things.

We need the future to beat the present.

We need NewWinnings.

The post The Creativity Suite. Episode 165: NewWinnings first appeared on The Creativity Explorer.

Interview with Alvanson So, Regional People Lead – South East Asia at Canva.

Sometimes we can learn so much about a word by looking at its etymology.

The post The Creativity Suite. Episode 164: Harnessing Creative Energy. first appeared on The Creativity Explorer.

We talked about everything from pitching movie ideas to how AI will change the creative process.

One thing that stuck with me from the conversation was how Leopold would check pitches for creative projects against one sentence: HISTB?

HISTB? stands for “Have I Seen This Before?”

If your first reaction to someone else’s ideas (or even your own) is “Oh, that reminds me of X” then your idea is lacking the magic “X factor” that is the difference between a “good idea” and a “great idea”.

But if your first reaction to a new idea is “Ah, this is original!”, then you are on to something.

Be honest with yourself. If your idea is just reminding you of something else, then twist, tweak, dig deeper, pivot or change something until your first reaction is “wow!” Not “I have seen this before”.

A nice reminder to thrive for originality in your creativity.

IDEAS ISLAND 2

Since I closed down “Ideas Island” (the island where, for 10+ years, I let people stay for free to work on a creative project), I have decided to, instead, invite more creative people to my own island, Svanholmen, where I live with my family (see pic above).

One Ideas Island died, another Ideas Island is born.

Welcome to ‘Ideas Island 2’.

On this island I do not let creatives stay for a week (since this is the island I live on myself)

:-).

But instead, I want to have more creative people over for interviews, discussions, conversations etc.

Ideas Island 2 will be more about ‘creative discussions’ where I learn about the creative process from creative people.

For 25 years I have been exploring the world to learn about creativity from all kinds of people.

And I will continue to do so, of course.

But now I also want to open up my own home (and island) so that creative people can come to me, and not just me coming to them.

If you are visiting Stockholm, please do reach out to me and you might just get an invite to come to the island so that we can discuss creativity together.

CREATIVE INSPIRATION

2026 has started wonderfully. As always, I aim to spread creative inspiration around the world.

This year I have already been to:

Thailand

Singapore

Belgium

Korea

India

Denmark

And, of course, Sweden

And many more countries are in the pipeline for the rest of the year.

It is a privilege and an honour to travel the world to study, learn – and teach – the topic of creativity.

If you know of anyone, in any country or industry, that is keen on getting some creativity inspiration, then please do let them know about me.

🙂

www.FredrikHaren.com

The post HISTB? (The Creativity Explorer. Episode 280) first appeared on The Creativity Explorer.

Well you would be surprised.

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Contura AB has developed a wood burning stove called “Contura Zero” that – almost magically! – has virtually zero emissions (1mg particles per cubic meter of smoke, compared to 50-150mg for other stoves)

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To create a “stove with no emissions” sounds impossible – but Contura did not let that stop them.
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(They have also invented a stove that reduces the fuel consumption of a wood fired stove by more than 25% (!). No, “a stove is not just a stove” and “a fire is not just a fire”.)
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I just LOVE speaking to companies that do not let the seemingly impossible stop them.
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A few days I was in Markaryd – the home of Contura – to speak to their people about continuing to challenge what they do and how.
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The name Contura is made up of “con” meaning “together” and “tonare” meaning “to twist and turn” – so the word Contura is poetically translated to “together we twist and turn the things we do”.
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That should really be a verb: “to conture” – ie “to together twist and turn everything one does in order to find new ways of improving”.
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I left Markaryd inspired.

The post Challenging the Impossible. (Episode 279) first appeared on The Creativity Explorer.

And then rowed it (!) (with my luggage and everything) to the island… it took 2 hours 45 minutes in stunning spring sunshine and virtually no wind. What bliss. 

Perfect way to end a long speaking trip. 

Creativity cannot just be used to make more money or sell more etc – but also to create a wonderful end to a business trip.

The post Next level professional speaking commuting. (Episode 278) first appeared on The Creativity Explorer.

I think the Swedish word gives an added meaning to what an experience is.

As, if you go to an event and it is “an upplevelse”, then it is an event where you felt you fully lived for a while.

On Friday I had the absolute pleasure of attending (and speaking at) the ULTIMATE Adventure Travel Business Forum.

These guys are experts at creating “upplevelse” from luxury group travels, to business trips and creative business meetings.

And at the event, they had three panels masterfully moderated by Mia Odabas. Panels can sometimes be quite dull or may lack energy, but here – they were full of energy.

During “my” panel I proposed a new word: “Grupplevelse” – a combination of the word “group” and “upplevelse” to describe the specific feeling of experiencing something as a group. A collective experience. An event where you feel “fully alive because you are doing something with others”.

I think it is a made-up word that really should make it into a dictionary! 🙂

Because experiencing something in a group can, if done right, be a very special experience. 

(I remember when me and my family attended a group cooking class in Italy recently and how amazing it was to cook pizza and gelato together with total strangers who were all there to learn the same thing. A great example of a “Grupplevelse”, of a group of people fully living by doing something together.)

And if done right, a conference can be a perfect “grupplevelse” too. A group of people being inspired together is different than one person being inspired by themselves.

The group inspiration feeling can help create other types of ideas and creativity.

As a speaker on creativity, I am, of course, a strong believer in the idea of meeting to help inspire new ideas.

What is the best “Grupplevelse” you have ever had?

Ps. Never stop exploring the world of creativity to discover your creative potential.

The post “Grupplevelse” – A collective experience (Episode 277) first appeared on The Creativity Explorer.

This morning I woke up from a terrible nightmare. It is one of two recurring nightmares that I have.

In this one – I call them ‘Fredrik, you are up!’ – nightmares! – I was told that I was up for a speech in just 45 minutes from now and that the audience had heard me earlier and they wanted something “different”.

The speaker before me was nailing it (including bringing live horses (!) into the venue to make his point…)

As I was stressing to get my PPT ready, my computer lagged.

Five minutes before I was due (and when the other speaker was finishing his speech with a song….) I said to myself: ‘Skip the slides – just speak from your heart’.

My message from myself to myself was: ‘Never forget to be present as a speaker. Presence Beats Props’.

This is what dreams are (or at least, can be): Messages from ourselves to ourselves.

I dream a lot about work. And I do not think that it is a bad thing. I think I am using one of the best creative tools we have – our subconscious mind – to help develop myself as a speaker.

(If you are interested, my other recurring dream is me ALMOST missing a flight to a speech… And if you know me, you might know why I get those dreams :-D. But to my credit: in my dreams – and in real life – I do always make it to the speech in the end…)

Do you dream about work?

What has it taught you?

The post Dreams are ideas from ourselves to ourselves (Episode 276) first appeared on The Creativity Explorer.

It’s time to rethink what we think “legacy company” means.

Today the word “legacy” means something impactful that took place in the past.

So a “legacy company” is a business that has been established for a long time and has a well-known brand, history, or influence in its industry.

But the original meaning of the word “legacy”, from the 14th century, is actually “body of persons sent on a mission,”

In other words, “legacy” was a forward-looking activity.

We need to get back to that mindset when we look at legacy companies.

To get the right focus, let’s talk about “Active Legacy” as in “the act of rethinking what we do in order to continue to thrive for a long time.”

I learned about “active legacy” from Christos Karagiannakis, CEO at Kotsovolos.

Kotsovolos is a legacy Greek retailer specializing in household appliances and electronic products, established in 1950.

Kotsovolo’s legacy has been retail electronics.

But this industry is quickly transforming.

Historically appliances were “dumb”.

Now this is changing.

Suddenly a dishwasher can go online and check the price of electricity and decide to wash the dishes in the middle of the night.

This opens up a whole world of opportunities for new products, services and solutions.

I asked Christos for three pieces of advice for how to apply a mindset of “active legacy”.

He said

Re-evaluate.

Always be thinking of how existing capabilities can be converted to new types of skills.

Be ambidextrous.

You need to be able to handle both the old business model while developing the new.

Reverse mentoring.

You need the executive team to be very solid in how the business performs and at the same time you need to make sure they are getting insights about what is now possible, so by assigning “reverse mentors” where younger staff who understand the changing environment are mentoring their more senior managers is valuable.

A legacy company is not a legacy company because of what they have done in the past. Instead they are still around because they have been able to change with the times.

Remember “legacy” is an active, forward-looking word. A phrase that originated as a description of someone on a mission.

Want to be around for a long time and become a “legacy company”? Then practice “active legacy”.

The post The Creativity Suite. Episode 163: Active Legacy first appeared on The Creativity Explorer.