Origin

The National Chengchi University Center for Creativity and Innovation Studies (CCIS) was established in August of 2003 as a university-level research center. From an academic base, CCIS drives the study of innovation and creativity through research, promotion, and exchange, with the goal of becoming a platform for innovation across industry, government, and academia. CCIS strives to create comprehensive theoretical models and systemic narratives. On a solid research foundation, CCIS uses innovative thinking to realize goals of interdisciplinary integration and diverse development, while further co-creating valuable resources and cultivating creative talent, breaking new ground in practice, and moving from thought to practical action to solve social problems.

Mission

Creativity and innovation are key factors for enhancing national competiveness. To welcome the creative economy and meet the diverse challenges of industrial competition, countries around the world are all concerned with how to increase creativity, and are further establishing educational policies related to innovation and entrepreneurship. Within this context, the Center for Creativity and Innovation Studies (CCIS) was established to nurture innovation in fields like the humanities, communications, and social sciences, achieve interdisciplinary integration, and promote innovative entrepreneurship within industries. Teams formed by the center administer research projects intended to stimulate thought and practice through interdisciplinary integration on the basis of sustainable innovation.

Innovation is essential for comprehensive social development, as well as to the continued progress in action derived from processes and results of existing explorations and knowledge across industry, academia, and government. Creativity covers processes related to creative thought and practice. We believe that creativity involves the expression of unique, novel, and appropriate ideas, and that these ideas must undergo an innovation stage to be implemented in practice. Under this guiding principle, CCIS is able to encounter diverse innovative and creative results through the interaction of various forms of knowledge and ways of thinking.

Since its founding in 2003, CCIS has passed through various stages, opening with research in “creative education and lifestyles”, then starting to practice “creative and innovative” thought, later promoting “imagining the future and entrepreneurship”, pioneering the development of “humanistic innovation”, and finally moving into the new stage today of “diverse innovation”. CCIS leverages a vast store of accumulated knowledge and abilities from previous creativity and innovation studies and processes of turning creative thought into action, while further bringing into play capabilities in information technology and digital innovation, as we forge ahead with diverse innovation and production of results in three major areas: educational, social, and digital innovation. Knowing innovation to be boundless, CCIS continues to explore the field and form new visions of the future. By building on experiences from every stage, we strive to make National Chengchi University (NCCU) a base of excellence in the Asia-Pacific region for research and development in innovation.

CCIS holds the belief that “creativity is for both creative thinking and practice”, and thus continues to build on diverse experiences in research and practice, while stimulating creativity within different fields. In the future, besides moving towards the goal of establishing NCCU as a base of excellence for innovation research and development in the Asia-Pacific region, we also envision a further three roles for the center, including: functioning as a platform for innovation across industry, government, and academia; facilitating movements from academia to cases of innovation in social practice; and serving as a creativity and innovation think tank for the government. By accumulating experiences related to these three roles, the center may flourish,expanding its role in the university and integrating academic capabilities from across departments and disciplines, while returning to the real world by practicing local innovation, ultimately allowing CCIS to become an important base for innovation studies in Taiwan and the Asia-Pacific region.