GS02 KEYNOTE: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery
8:30 AM - 10:00 AM Wednesday, March 27
Executive Ballroom
Where do new innovations—new ideas—spring from? Sarah Lewis offers a new understanding of what enables creative endeavors. What really drives iconic, transformational change on both a personal and an organizational level? From Nobel Prize–winning discoveries to works of art, many of our creative triumphs are not achievements, but conversions, corrections after failed attempts. Drawing on figures such as Frederick Douglass, Angela Duckworth, J.K. Rowling, and others, Dr. Lewis reveals the importance of play, grit, surrender, often-ignored ideas, and the necessary experiments and follow-up attempts that lead to true breakthroughs. Smart, uplifting, and counterintuitive, this keynote will help change the way you think about creativity, innovation, and mastery.

Sarah Lewis
Assistant Professor, Harvard and Author, The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery
Sarah Lewis, an assistant professor at Harvard in the history of art and architecture and African and African American studies, is the author of the bestselling book The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery, which explores how iconic work is born from failure. Dr. Lewis was the guest editor of Aperture magazine’s “Vision & Justice” issue, which won the Infinity Prize from the International Center of Photography, is required reading at NYU’s Tisch School, and became one of Harvard’s core general education classes. Dr. Lewis has spoken on the TED main stage and at SXSW, appeared on Oprah’s “Power List,” served on President Obama’s Arts Policy Committee, and been profiled in Vogue. She holds a BA from Harvard, an MPhil from Oxford, and a PhD from Yale.