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Who are we?

Flanders DC is short for Flanders District of Creativity. In other words, we’re a Flemish governmental organisation that promotes entrepreneurial creativity throughout the region in order to make Flanders a more creative, more prosperous and more ambitious place to live and work. Creativity comes in many colours. It means different things to different people: from simple gardening projects to self-help gurus or even scandalously expensive design items. This is one of the issues we confront on a daily basis at Flanders DC. Our type of creativity - entrepreneurial creativity - encourages people to think beyond that first obvious solution and go further: provide something of true value; significantly improve an existing product or idea (incremental improvements) or create something completely new (breakthrough innovation). Entrepreneurial creativity is when companies quite simply find different and better solutions -- better than the competition and different than what is currently on the market. Entrepreneurial creativity enables a company to react quicker to trends and market developments. It allows companies to apply creativity to every business area and not just marketing or new product development. Areas like HR, sales, IT, supply chain management, and even the business model itself need to get more creative in Flanders. That’s where we come in because… Creativity is a skill, a skill you can learn just like writing reports, making presentation slides or even riding a bicycle. And like any skill, it requires a bit of trial and error. You’ll need to practice and fall down a couple of times before you get really good at it -- a bit like learning to ride a bike. This is why Flanders DC develops tools to help you on your way to better creativity. Flanders DC offers a variety of brainstorming tools including a brainstorming ‘sampler’ that combines 7 creativity techniques as well as GPS for Enterprises, an idea generation method tailor-made for busy entrepreneurs.

Flanders is not cheap. This is a good thing because a lot of other countries admire our overall quality of life. Unfortunately, there is a flip side to this: Flemish employees are extremely expensive compared to other countries. In the past, this didn’t matter as much since the Flemish people are some of the most productive in the world, thanks to a strong work ethic, advanced technology and a high level of automation. But today, the region finds itself practically at the pinnacle of productivity: this means that it takes an enormous effort to cause even the smallest amount of improvement. So what is a region to do when…

You’re too expensive? You’ve practically reached the limits of your productivity? Wouldn’t it be smarter to take an entirely new direction? 

 

Entrepreneurial creativity can help you come up with the right type of new ideas to do just this. If Flanders wants to continue to guarantee enough jobs, the region needs strong, creative companies. And if Flanders wants to take the lead in the new creative world, we need to make sure that Flemish people are hyper-creative. In short, it is time to get cracking on creativity. Flanders DC researches the current state of creativity and innovation, coordinates an international network of regions with creativity high on the agenda, and organises creativity awareness projects.

A

non-profit association

or VZW in Dutch, Flanders DC was founded in 2004 by the Flemish government. Mostly financed by the Flemish government, Flanders DC remains an independent organisation supervised by the Administration for Economic Inspection from the Ministry of the Flemish Community. Flanders DC has a management board that helps shape the organisation’s overall strategy as well as ratify important decisions taken by the General Manager.