Wharton@Work

September 2025 | 

What’s Next: Harnessing Creativity in the Age of AI

What’s Next: Harnessing Creativity in the Age of AI

You don’t need a paintbrush to be creative — but you do need creativity to grow, innovate, and stay ahead.

In a world where markets shift overnight, technologies disrupt entire industries, and customers expect constant reinvention, creativity isn’t a nice-to-have side skill — it’s a leadership imperative. “Everyone, and every organization, can enhance their creativity if they use the right approaches,” says Wharton professor emeritus Jerry Wind. “These approaches can be applied to any personal or professional challenge, and when you use AI to turbocharge them, the results can be extraordinary.”

His new Coursera course, Creativity in Business and Other Disciplines, and upcoming book, Creativity in the Age of AI (October 2025), are designed to help leaders challenge entrenched thinking, harness AI, and turn bold ideas into tangible results.

Why the World Needs More Creativity — Now

Wind is clear about the urgent need for creativity. “Just look at the world around us,” he says. “Everything is changing: technology, business models, geopolitics, even values. From rotary phones to smartphones, Ford’s Model T to electric self-driving cars, ideas that once resided only in science fiction have reshaped everyday life. And the pace of change is only accelerating with advances in AI, neuroscience, synthetic biology, and autonomous systems. If there ever was a time to challenge your mental models, it’s now,” Wind insists.

Yet most organizations unintentionally suppress creativity through rigid hierarchies, bureaucratic processes, and risk aversion. This traps people in outdated ways of thinking and behaving that confine their thinking. “The first step to unlocking extraordinary creativity is challenging the status quo,” Wind says. “By challenging and changing your mental models, you can change your future.”

The Course: From Inspiration to Implementation

Wind’s course, built on decades of teaching the subject to Wharton MBA and executive students and his extensive consulting work, is rooted in the belief that creativity is a discipline that can be learned, practiced, and mastered, no matter who you are, where you work, or what kinds of challenges you are facing.

That belief also extends to age. Wind cites research by Martin Seligman, founder of Positive Psychology, who asked highly creative people of all ages when they felt most creative. “The answer was almost unanimous: now,” Wind says. For many, experience itself is a creative asset. “The older you are, the more perspectives and analogies you can draw on to make novel connections and solve problems. Creativity isn’t about age — it’s about how you choose to look at things differently.”

The curriculum for the new course blends theory with practice, offering 12 sets of approaches to enhance creativity. Learners are encouraged to experiment with these approaches, selecting those that resonate and building a personal “portfolio” of creative strategies. The course also features interviews with 60 extraordinary individuals — from Nobel Prize-winning scientists to magicians — who share how they push beyond conventional thinking.

“People don’t learn by passively listening to lectures,” Wind explains. “The only way to learn effectively is experientially. The course gives you opportunities to apply the approaches to challenges you care about — and to discover how they can take you in directions you might never have anticipated.”

Creativity Meets AI

While the course offers a broad exploration of creativity across disciplines, Creativity in the Age of AI focuses squarely on the intersection of creative thinking and emerging technology. For each of the 12 approaches, Wind and his co-authors show how AI tools can accelerate and expand idea generation, problem solving, and execution.

“There’s no single best approach to creativity,” he says. “My advice is to choose the ones that resonate with you, experiment, and make them part of your toolkit. Then, use AI to boost their power.”

Solving the Growth Challenge

Growth is one of the most common — and most pressing — challenges leaders face. But whether it’s expanding into new markets, adding distribution channels, or rethinking a business model, Wind argues that creativity is the key to unlocking these opportunities.

“Everyone is concerned about growth,” he says. “But you can’t get there by doing the same things you’ve always done. You need fresh ideas, and you need to act on them.”

Wind defines creativity as producing something new that has value — and value comes only with follow-through. “It’s not about holding an offsite, brainstorming a list, and then doing nothing with it,” he says. “The course shows you how to take creativity from concept to action, and how to use AI to spot possibilities you might not see otherwise.”

Learning from Other Worlds

A hallmark of Wind’s teaching is exposure to diverse disciplines and perspectives. Through the Wharton Fellows program, he exposed CEOs and other senior leaders to “the next big thing” across industries and disciplines. Over nearly two decades, Wind curated master classes that included visits to art museums, cutting-edge tech labs and ad agencies, and even restaurants that were challenging prevailing business models.

“One of the greatest lessons from those experiences is that no problem today can be solved with a single discipline,” Wind says. “Whether it’s homelessness or the digital divide, every challenge requires multiple perspectives.”

The course offers that same cross-pollination through its roster of guest speakers and its encouragement to look outside your field for inspiration. “Read science fiction,” Wind urges. “Follow the MIT Technology Review’s top 10 breakthrough technologies. Go to a museum. Creativity thrives when you stretch yourself.”

That same message is echoed by Wharton alum and Wharton Fellow Evan Shelan, co-founder and chairman of Global FinTechForum, LLC. “My journey toward becoming a risk-taking, outside-the-box thinker and strategic leader was a gradual evolution. The Wharton Fellows Program accelerated that growth, offering access to top professors, accomplished business leaders, and a diverse group of peers who pushed my thinking further.”

Creativity as a Lifelong Practice

The ultimate goal, Wind says, is for learners to embed creativity into their professional and personal lives. “Once you find approaches that work for you, use them repeatedly. Make them part of how you and your team operate.”

In a time of unprecedented turbulence, that mindset may be the most valuable outcome of all. “Everyone has to be more creative to survive in this changing world,” Wind says. “And everyone can be — if they choose to challenge their mental models and explore new possibilities. Creativity is our uniquely human advantage, and AI makes it even stronger.”

Through the course, you’ll have the chance to experiment with dozens of creativity-building approaches, learn from more than 60 remarkable innovators, and see how AI can help you take your ideas even further. It’s an invitation to imagine boldly, rethink what’s possible, and persevere until those possibilities become reality — enjoying the creative journey and its rewards along the way.