|
| The Gurteen Knowledge Website |
|
GKR Article
|
Let's get togetherThe Global Knowledge Review - April 2005 |
|
 /VIEW-IMAGE/$File/view-image.png "Image information"){kind=small} This new perspective was created, in part, by my experience of running a recent innovation workshop. The EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council), one of the UK's main research funding bodies, asked me to organise a 5 day event in which some of the UK's brightest academic chemists would attempt to develop radically new ideas. The event was part of the EPSRC’s IDEAS initiative, which aims to stimulate new thinking through cross-disciplinary collaboration. The most interesting part of the brief was that it was, to say the least, open ended. The theme was simply ‘ways to create new molecules’. The EPSRC was funding a workshop in which there was no specific problem to be solved, no client to be satisfied, and no clear indication of how to go about it. In essence, I was being asked to organise a five day cocktail party. Who says the Government won’t take risks! After some thought the team decided to reject our traditional approach to facilitating innovation, namely have a carefully designed series of activities through which the participants will achieve the end result, and instead adopt a much more organic approach. Instead, we worked on the assumption that if you put a smart group of people into a stimulating environment, raise the energy level by introducing some fun and then allow the reaction to take place, something is bound to happen. And, it did. Unfortunately, at the time of writing, I can’t actually describe the ideas which came out of the workshop, other than to say they were very exciting. What I can do though is reflect upon the process and explore what it might mean in a business environment. First and foremost, time to think is critical. Some of the thinking takes place in isolation, some through discussion and some even when you are learning to Samba drum. Whatever the context, having sufficient time is absolutely essential. Contrast this with our current business environment. The staff in most organisations bemoan the lack of thinking time. However, this time-crunch is rarely challenged, in fact busyness is simply accepted and meetings are organised to account for people’s crowded agendas. Thinking time is often seen as synonymous with wasting time. Secondly, ideas emerge through conversation, and the more diverse the group the greater the chance of interesting conversations. When the EPSRC advertised the workshop, they specifically invited applications from disciplines far beyond the traditional bounds of academic chemistry. Artists, archaeologists, psychologists and musicologists were all welcome. Thirdly, diversity brings with it an entirely new set of problems. A homogenous group has a shared language and everyone has an implicit understand of what other people are likely to know. As the breadth of a group expands, more and more time has to be invested in answering the question “what do you know that might be of interest to me?” and vice versa. Fortunately, we had anticipated this requirement and had organised the first day as a series of conversations in which people could get to know each other. What we hadn’t expected was the vast rush of ideas which resulted from these early conversations. The results of this workshop have certainly prompted me to revisit the ways in which we organise innovation events. When the problem is clear, and the deadlines are tight, developing an agenda which moves from data gathering through to solution implementation, still has great merit. And, from time to time, you may like to invite a diverse range of your colleagues to come to a creative cocktail party, with the sole objective of chatting. You will be amazed at what can be achieved.
|
04:25 AM GDT |
