Creative Quest for Leadership Transformation: Insights from Liberal Arts

Innovation, ethical as well as humanistic, has its roots in fostering and flourishing of creativity in every field of human endeavour, business and otherwise. Mere techno-economic connotation of creativity, as dominant in modern global business and economy, is inadequate to capture the deeper and wider reaches of human creative potential that can inspire breakthrough innovations in modern organizations. The present paper expands the quest for creativity from its narrow instrumental confines to the vast realm of effulgence of human creative potential in the arena of Liberal Arts and aspires to achieve the much awaited and desired synthesis of Management and Liberal Arts for mutual enrichment. At a more tangible level the paper attempts to delve into the various aspects of creativity from the life and works of legendary creative masters from the East and the West to gain inspirational insights for leadership transformation. The paper unfolds this creative odyssey, in the spirit of pilgrimage, towards evolution of leadership consciousness from agony to ecstasy, from questioning to quest culminating in the experience of joy and freedom when the leader, like many creative masters finally becomes child-like in nature.