CREATIVITY REIMAGINED
How Do We Keep Our Humanity in the Age of AI?
My answer starts with the urgent need to re-imagine our creativity for an age of complexity.
Author · Advisor · Professor · Entrepreneur · Producer · Pianist
MY PURPOSE
We are living through the most significant shift in human cognition since the printing press.
AI can now reason, compose, and create. The question is no longer what machines can do.
It's what we choose to do with what only we have.
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I believe creativity is not a talent. It's a discipline.
And in a world of accelerating complexity, that discipline needs to be completely reimagined.
Not optimised. Reimagined.
That's the work I've spent four decades doing.
And it's never mattered more than now.
THE JOURNEY
The four pillars behind my creative philosophy
Where creativity meets complexity.
01
Mastering the How
Creativity as a learnable discipline. Practices, not theories.
02
Creative Mindset
The inner work of thinking differently. Discernment, empathy, struggle, awe.
03
AI & Future of Creativity
Staying human while machines get smart. Binary systems giving way to poly ones.
04
Polymath's Advantage
Thinking across boundaries. The career that refuses categories.
MR CREATIVITY
"Mr. Creativity. If Orsen Welles and Peter Drucker were to mate,
the offspring would resemble John Kao, a serial innovator."
The Economist
SELECTED WRITING
Read some of my published writing
FORBES
Disruption or Discontinuity: Why the Difference Matters
Why the language we use to describe change shapes our ability to respond to it.
Metaproficiencies are necessary in a increasingly disrupted world of work. But what are they?
FORBES
What Are Meta- proficiencies And Why Do They Matter?
These six intelligences will drive smart leadership in disrupted times.
W.E.F
Six Essential Intelligences
FOLLOW THE JOURNEY
A book, a course, a growing body of work, and a community of people re-imagining creativity for a new era. This is the beginning.
SUBSTACK
What I am working on, what I am thinking about
ONGOING
Yale: Finding Yourself in the Future of Creativity
Designed for aspiring entrepreneurs, future leaders, and innovators, the course explores the human and cognitive dimensions of creativity
ONGOING
Conference Chair on Human Intelligence at the American Academy in Rome
A six-week residency bringing together historians designers, thinkers strategists to explore the past, present, and future of human intelligence.
IN DEVELOPMENT
The Future is Human
A book on the fight to stay human in the age of AI.
JOHN KAO
About John
John Kao has spent four decades working across creativity, technology, and education. He launched the creativity course at Harvard Business School, produced award-winning films and Broadway theatre, built technology companies, and now teaches at Yale, where his students study what it means to stay human in the age of AI. The Economist called him "Mr. Creativity."
GET IN TOUCH
Keynotes, advisory, and creative facilitation.
For speaking engagements, strategic advisory, or collaboration inquiries.