By Giuseppe Boscherini
Edition 6 – October 2015 Pages 06-09
Tags: office design • architecture • human resources
With collaboration, creativity and innovation increasingly perceived as key objectives and differentiators of business performance, isn’t it time we explored the ways in which physical attributes of work settings may influence, or even trigger, creative work behaviour? So where do you get your best ideas or any ideas at all for that matter?.
The cliché of the shower as one of these favourite places comes to mind and yet experience does show that the idea of seeking a setting, a “zone” if you will, for a specific purpose is intuitively right. This needn’t be a retreat or cocoon, as is often assumed, but can also be a crowded, busy, noisy place. This might explain why so often the most animated work conversations move out of the office into the coffee shop. Equally, highlight events or special meetings tend to be held in a “venue’, often dressedfor the occasion.
The symbiotic association of special activities with codified rituals is as established as civilization itself; the recognition that settings – temples, town halls and courthouses – and their props – altars, maces and gavels – play an important role, not just in embodying but possibly also in stimulating and facilitating the very activities with which they are associated.
This also applies to the very special activity that is the generation of ideas or “ideation”; not to be confused with innovation. Not all ideas are or need to be innovative, but all are defined as ideas in that they are, with varying degrees of success,the expression of creative thinking and problem solving.
From the start, I would like to dispel two myths. The first relates to the use of the term “creativity” in the context of business. Business has embraced some of the language and, in the face of the failure of traditional management systems, sought to appropriate the language, techniques and structure that are typical of the Arts; is this legitimate and to what purpose? Perhaps it is therefore more fitting to be discussing ideation in the context of knowledge exchange and creation.
In 1995 Nonaka and Takeuchi1 introduced the SECI model, which has become the cornerstone of knowledge creation and transfer theory. They proposed four ways that knowledge types can be combined and converted, showing how knowledge is shared and created. The model is based on the two types of knowledge: explicit and tacit.
Most knowledge is tacit. So a major challenge for businesses aiming to break a mechanical, systemic and stale pattern of behaviour at work encounter is in transforming their tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge. This is what we may otherwise call ideation and which requires the kind of spaces and associated culture that encourage a free flowing exchange of ideas and acclimatise people to the habits of sharing and learning.
The second myth I would like to dispel is that of the single introspective creative act suggesting in its place that ideation, as knowledge exchange, is a collaborative orchestration of inputs. In that creation is the response to external inputs from any given context, it is by definition collaborative, as no idea emerges from a void but is the result of interaction. The more diverse and large the creative team the richer the creative process.
Articulating ideation into distinctly structured stages is not contrary to the creative act. A creative process does indeed possess structure. While it may wander, it is a hugely purposeful and intense mission. That intensity of thought and reasoning needs to be maintained alive throughout the process. When doing so, it is best to let the development of ideas take place in bursts, broken up by periods of pause, reflection and discussion. The idea of continual refinement is in fact implicit in the notion of ideation. It is achieved through a timely sequence of successive layering, which enriches and confers depth to the ideas being developed.
The more often ideas are tabled and discussed, exposed, shared, stripped apart and compared with others, the better the outcome. Believe it or not, these are what we call meetings and, when they are loaded with the ambition to generate ideas they become brainstorming meetings, the official sanctum of ideation. With productivity, personal fulfilment as well as target setting in mind, the true purpose of meetings is never clearly stated but often includes ideation, resolution and crisis management.
David Pearl, founder of the “Meeting Doctor” initiative and author of “Will there be Donuts”2, states that there is no such thing as “just a meeting”; meetings are particular and can be defined by their specific intention and their function. Here are just a few key examples:
1. Dialogue
Definition – free exchange of ideas between two or more participants.
Conditions – informal, eye-to-eye, no obstacles, comfort, human, lively.
2. Discuss
Definition – two or more people purposefully hammering out an idea or issue.
Conditions – high connectivity, good sightlines for whole group, focus, energy….