I keynoted the Creative Leadership Conference in Kansas City at Hallmark Cards, Inc. today. There I was fortunate to meet Vice President of Creative Greetings and RISD ‘87 alumni Jeff Wilson. I was impressed with Jeff’s story about how he leveraged the entrepreneurial skills he learned at RISD to become a successful business leader in the creative field.

There, Hallmark Master Artist Mike Adair gave a fun and inspiring talk about how he migrated from being a classical illustrator to learning how to use Flash and “animate, animate, animate.” Adair is behind the enormously successful (and hilarious) Hoops and Yoyo series. At the close of his presentation, Adair gave his three guiding points for the creative mind:

• Passion = Authenticity: When you are passionate, everything you do becomes truly real.
• You are what you make: As RISD Provost Shefrin says, “Making is a kind of thinking.”
• Don’t be afraid of the unknown: Be a president of a college that blogs whatever’s on his mind.

The entire conference theme was on the notion of how “creative leadership” is the path forward for the 21st century organization. Inspiring, and so true.