Because collaboration, creativity and innovation are increasingly perceived as key objectives and differentiators of performance, the genesis and mechanisms behind ideation and creativity are an an integral part of both business and personal development. As a consequence, there is growing interest in the way the physical attributes of work settings may influence or even trigger creative behaviour. 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, which might explain why so often the most animated work conversations move out of the office shop into the coffee shop. Equally, highlight events or special meetings tend to be held in a “venue’, often dressed for the occasion.
So too with 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 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 Takeuchi 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
Tacit
Most knowledge is tacit
A major challenge that 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 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 brainstormingmeetings, 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.