Innovation has become mandatory in a society that initiates new trends and changes. Innovation thus comes to every organization, provides new perspectives, and creates new opportunities. It also develops new concepts by giving the innovator the opportunity to be proactive. Innovation culture in companies brings growth, new products and improvements, but it affects the loyalty and satisfaction of employees.

With this in mind, Enter Koprivnica has organized the SMARTUP program, which presented the knowledge needed to start innovation and creativity through numerous successful examples from different sectors. The SMARTUP program consisted of 6 training sessions on creative thinking, tools and techniques for obtaining new ideas, but also encouraging participants to find their own creativity. The program was led by Tomislav Buljubašić, who has 10 years of experience in innovation and technology management, the author of the innovation award program that raised the innovation culture and a special series of innovation challenges for developers, and the author of the book Developing Innovation: Innovation Management in IT Companies.

In order to stimulate one's own creativity, there are various techniques that help in this, such as methods of calming down, and returning to the past when we were relaxed, it is necessary to move to an environment without distraction and empty the imagination. Creativity can be stimulated by travel. When we travel, we meet new people, and new places, and experience new experiences that can result in various creative ideas.

The critical term in creativity is inspiration, but also the importance of lateral thinking, which is a way of solving problems using an indirect and creative approach through the reasoning that, is not immediately obvious. Lateral thinking encourages us not to always think in the same way and influences the development of more creative ideas.

This program brought the knowledge needed to drive innovation and creativity through numerous successful examples from different sectors and participants were taught about creative thinking, tools and techniques on how to find new ideas.

Region Arts (Enhancing SME growth by integration of Artists in ICT projects) https://www.interregeurope.eu/regionarts/ which is funded through the INTERREG EUROPE program https://www.interregeurope.eu/. The project involves 8 partners from 7 countries, and the value of the project is 1,635,670.00.