Professor Gokce Basbug
- SKKGSB
- Hit7226
- 2019-04-18
An out-of-the-box class to learn how to foster, manage and incentivize creativity.
“You should try to be happy, you will learn more if you are happy”. These words opened the lesson, and were followed by an unexpected game. Suddenly students all around were laughing and enjoying themselves. This could pass for a social event, except it was an academic activity aiming to engrave certain concepts in the mind of the students.
The fun classroom is the class of Creativity and Innovation taught by Professor Gökçe Başbuğ, at SKK GSB, Sungkyunkwan University. Soft skills are not easy to teach or learn but will have a significant impact on both professional and personal lives of students. In order to build these soft skills, this class engages students in different ways and allows them to experiment with both theoretical and practical methods, and overall, it is cognitively rewarding for the self-reflecting students.
It would seem obvious for all of us to pursue happiness in our lives, and that every activity in which we get involved in seeks to take us to this goal. However, we seem to forget this often: we have a busy lifestyle and a high level of stress, fighting against the clock to achieve goals for which we feel no emotion.
We must love what we do in order to excel in it is the first idea that is proposed in the course. Also, we need to realize that positive emotions are key to creativity and innovation. This is so evident and yet so ignored.
“This class forced me to pause in my busy lifestyle and rethink things in a different way. I believe that creativity is something that we must cultivate daily, both to achieve excellence in the workplace, and the much-desired happiness in our personal lives. Sometimes we are so busy that we forget to just contemplate life to come up with new ideas,” said one student.
“I certainly will not forget the importance of enjoying what you do to obtain excellent results. The class instills this in us and is so special that it becomes memorable,” said another student.
After graduating from Istanbul University, Professor Başbuğ, earned an M.Sc. and a Ph.D. from MIT Sloan School of Management. He has been teaching MBA students at SKK GSB since 2017.