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This third millennium has been variously characterized by sociologists, economists, and futurists as the Creative Age (Florida, 2002), the Digital Age (Thomas & Brown, 2011), and the Conceptual Age...

During the twentieth century, it became clear that national economies can make progress only by investing in human capital. Knowledge increases human productivity and creativity, and society can prosper only through human self-awareness, understanding of the world around them and by increasing the quality of their lives. In the information age, progress was made through information and technology, with particular emphasis on critical thinking. But in the conceptual economy of the 21st century, influenced by three key developments ; over-supply, outsourcing, and automation, it has become clear that critical thinking, even with the help of high technology, is no longer sufficient to make a living or to be competitive in the labor market. In the 'Value age' these capabilities need to be complemented by highly conceptual and highly sensitive traits. The integration of critical and creative thinking is a fundamental factor in personal productivity and the essential condition for achieving sustainable economic development. The self-assessment of Algebra University College students was designed to investigate the extent to which students integrated critical and creative thinking into their own circumstances and to explore whether there is a correlation between the type of thinking they are more inclined to and their study programs.

The world has entered into an era of disruptive innovation where transformation is needed. In the conceptual age, a business needs to have new experiences and create ideas. This paper aims to identify the most important challenges of Small Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) in exploiting innovative opportunities. The main issue facing many SMEs - industrial and service with less than 50 employees, is how they can foster effective innovation. There are 118 questionnaires were distributed and gathered from SMEs in Surabaya, Indonesia. This research is using factor analysis which shows the six main challenges: lack of managerial training and experience, inadequate education and skills, national policy and regulatory environment, technological change, lack of market information, and lack of credit. Qualitative approach through interview is also used for interpretation of data. In conclusion, human capabilities and intelligence are not enough to compete but require technology and information to creatively transform.

This introductory chapter sets out the challenges all schools face in preparing young people for a world vastly different from the one most teachers grew up in. It then moves to consider how to design pedagogical activities that are likely to result in creative learning outcomes. The changes that new technologies are making to our living, learning and earning are unprecedented. This means, among other things, that value-adding learning environments will continue to become more digitally resourced, more networked, more self-directed, more software mediated, more open and more accessible. Yet we need to be thinking more radically about what children learn and how they learn it than ‘going digital’ in the learning environment. Fortunately, we are beginning to understand that creativity is a key driver of a sustainable and productive economy for a global and ethical citizenry. Moeover, we now know that creativity is in many respects both teachable and learnable. In understanding how important creative capacity is to the Conceptual Age, teachers can work towards making it less vaporous and more visible as a set of dispositions and capabilities that are at the centre of curriculum design and implementation.