What is Upside/Down Thinking?
It is stepping out of your normal role, out of your comfort zone, and using non-traditional tools for problem solving. For example: What solutions would industry icons come up with? How would your favorite comic, actor, singer, dancer, artist or musician approach the solution?

Zoka, as defined by the 17th century Japanese poet Basho, means Creativity and Change.

Zoka Training^® teaches individuals a skill set that can influence any organization’s bottom line - the fine art of developing creative solutions through collaborative, upside/down thinking. By focusing on exploring ideas rather than identifying problems, Zoka Training^® unlocks hidden creative potential by showing individuals how to think outside their preferred styles and focus their creative energy – thus turning knowledge workers into inspired thinkers and solutions-driven contributors.

“The need to grow creative capital is not simply a competitive issue for individual companies. It is an economic challenge for the United States. To defend the U.S. economy, we (need to) tap into the creative potential of more and more workers. The reason? Wherever creativity goes, economic growth follows.”
- Richard Florida, Harvard Business Review

If you think about how we are oriented from a very early age – we come into the world with wonder and curiosity only to be told throughout our education what we can and cannot do, how we should think, with answers given to us by well-intentioned parents and educators. We are continually taught to go for the answers, a process that is ongoing throughout our professional lives. Hardly a process that encourages creative thinking. And when answers are handed to us with minimal energy on our part, the who, what, when, where, how and why factors we were born with are subjugated – and that, in turn, stifles the creative thinking process. That’s our formative orientation.

Zoka Training^® teaches individuals in creative ways – through arts-based training – how to understand and unlock their creative potential, how to use more of their right brain – with the ultimate objective of developing a true creative culture within the organization. But it’s important to understand that a creative culture, whether in business or the arts, is built on individual creativity and unlocking that creativity. And that a collaboration among individual creative thinkers can lead to great things.

Companies focused on arts-for-business-based creativity training for Visioning, Communication, Customer Service, Business Development, and Team and New Product/Service Development include: American Express, AT&T, BBC, British Airways, Coca-Cola, Daimler-Chrysler, Dell Computers, DuPont, Ericsson, Halifax, Hallmark Cards, Hewlett Packard, Honeywell, IBM, Kodak, Lever Faberge, Lockheed Martin, McGraw Hill, Marks & Spenser, Mattel, Nike, Pfizer, Royal Bank of Canada, Saatchi & Saatchi, Sears, Shell, Scandia, The World Bank, NTT in Asia, and ABB in Europe.

What you can expect from Zoka Training^®:

• More agile, flexible, critical thinkers and creative problem solvers
• The ability to leverage internal assets by turning human capital into creative contributors
• Limited habitual responses transformed into, creative energy and innovative thinking
• Collaboration and cross-silo thinking that builds employee efficacy and customer loyalty
• An ongoing, creative culture in your business that generates ideas on a consistent basis
• An increased ability to compete more effectively in the global marketplace
• Increased global market share, revenues, margins and profits through innovation

A Creativity Tipping Point is both an individual and collective idea. But it starts with the individual as Zoka Training^® inspires individuals to think in ways that are different from their, day-to-day mindset. With Zoka Training^® and new cerebral skills in place, any individual can become a more creative contributor to the larger organization - and feel that they are accomplishing significant things on an individual level, as well.

For groups of workers, a Creativity Tipping Point occurs when a gathering of empowered individuals is formed and given tools to think creatively and work collaboratively with a specific objective in mind. This could be anything from generating new product/service ideas to process improvements to productivity enhancement, and well beyond.

The Zoka arts-based approach helps visionary executives and their companies cultivate, nurture, and benefit from a creative culture by tapping into the company’s own resources with our intuitive, highly-interactive, and proven-effective training program.

Zoka Training^® provides practical tools and real-world techniques geared towards addressing specific business challenges and achieving specific business objectives. Program participants explore workplace challenges and uncover new opportunities by incorporating left-brain logic, analyzing and planning with right-brain imagination, intuition and creativity arts-based techniques.

Zoka Training^® is designed to motivate people of all ages, functions and skill levels. Your knowledge workers will achieve more than they have previously believed possible. Your teams and business units will learn how to push the boundaries of existing or obvious solutions, and develop more creative, innovative, and ultimately, more profitable ideas.

“Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. The act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.”
- Peter F. Drucker

“In a few and intensive weeks, Larry Blumsack turned around our marketing and business development efforts at Apri®a. The change was dramatic.”
- Michael Fabiaschi, CEO Apri®a

Innovation is high on the agenda of every company today. It is the subject of countless articles and speeches, and the rationale behind countless mergers and acquisitions. It lies at the very heart of growth strategy. Optimizing creativity in the workplace to ensure productive and profitable innovation is, therefore, the challenge.

Zoka Training^® focuses on individuals, work groups or specific business or product challenges through

• Training
• Coaching
• Consulting
• Facilitating
• Workshops
• Keynote Speaking

A hands-on, highly interactive and experiential arts-for-business based training program, Zoka Training^® focuses on the two most important and most overlooked steps in bringing true Innovation into the workplace.

The first step begins with awakening and kindling the imagination of your people and teams with our comprehensive, yet simple-to-grasp tools and techniques.

The second step turns limited habit energy into expansive creative energy, leading to dramatically improved collaboration and cross-silo thinking.

Innovation is the business buzzword of the day. Yet, little wonder that most executives being surveyed are unsatisfied with the results of their innovation programs – programs with little if any focus or training on firing up individual creativity. Creativity is the key accelerant to successful, productive and profitable innovation in multi-directions.
-Larry Blumsack, Founder and Creativity Guru of Zoka Training^®

Larry Blumsack, the Founder and Creativity Director of Zoka Institute, has personally trained, coached, directed and taught over 5,000 business professionals and visual and performing artists on how to tap into and expand their own creativity.

Zoka Training^® is an outgrowth of 40 years of Larry’s best lessons learned from his parallel careers in business, the visual and performing arts and the media. That considerable knowledge and experience has been turned into a comprehensive training and consulting program for awakening and kindling creativity in business - which anyone can learn and benefit from.

Zoka Training^® for Creativity in Business utilizes the arts-based tools and techniques that produced innovation and success for Larry both as a practitioner and consultant in business development, sales, marketing, and crisis public relations.

A quick study, agile thinker, and highly creative idea generator with proven business results, Larry teaches the success skills he personally employs to expand the successes of his corporate clients. He draws upon a unique mix of talents and experience, that includes being a business development, sales and marketing consultant on how to sell to senior executives of the Fortune 1000; a B2B matchmaker setting meetings with senior executives of the Fortune 1000 for his clients’ services; trainer and coach to experienced sales professionals; founder/owner of two businesses; media and speech coach to executives; theater professor and founding member of the Theater Department at Northeastern University; a professional actor, acting coach, theater and television director/producer, training/sales video writer/producer/director, photographer, videographer, major event/concert planner and producer; set, lighting and costume designer, and Off-Off-Broadway producer. He directed a first of its kind arts-based training and rehabilitation program in the Massachusetts prison system in the 1970’s – which was viewed not only as being innovative, but also as a national model. Larry also holds a business degree from Northeastern University, and a graduate degree in Theater/Communications from Emerson College.

Larry serves on the Marketing and Dealmakers Committees of the Association for Corporate Growth – Boston Chapter. He is a member of the American Theater Critics Association, Screen Actors Guild, and America Federation of Television and Radio Artists. He is the recipient of the Outstanding Alumni Award in the Arts from Northeastern University.

For more than 30 years, Larry was also a syndicated columnist and radio and television critic/commentator on the arts - sharing his insights and expanding the capabilities and results of his audiences. Larry is also an accomplished painter, sculptor, furniture maker, bonsai artist, silversmith, automotive mechanic, gourmet cook, horseman, cyclist, archer and outdoorsman.

Most importantly, Larry knows how to ignite the spark that will fire up your people’s imagination and creativity - expanding the innovation potential of your company exponentially.

“Ancora Imparo” (“I am still learning.”)
- Michelangelo at the age of 87