Creativity – Integration and Implementation Insights

Creative destruction

November 29, 2022November 8, 2022

By Keith McCandless

author_keith-mccandless — Keith McCandless (biography)

My favorite part of working with groups is helping people notice and stop counterproductive behavior. We all have self-limiting individual and group behaviors. Of course, they are easier to spot in others than in ourselves. So, finding seriously fun ways to help people discover for themselves what they can stop doing is important.

I use an activity called TRIZ from Liberating Structures. The purpose of TRIZ is to:

Make it possible to speak the unspeakable and get skeletons out of the closet
Make space for innovation
Lay the ground for creative destruction by doing the hard work in a fun way
TRIZ may be used before or in place of visioning sessions
Build trust by acting all together to remove barriers.

Multidisciplinary perspectives on unknown unknowns

October 4, 2022September 6, 2022

By Gabriele Bammer

gabriele-bammer_nov-2021 — Gabriele Bammer (biography)

This is part of a series of occasional “synthesis blog posts” drawing together perspectives on related topics across i2Insights contributions.

How can different disciplines and practitioners enhance the ability to understand and manage unknown unknowns, also referred to as deep uncertainty?

Seventeen blog posts have addressed these issues, covering:

Capitalising on incommensurability

April 29, 2021March 30, 2021

By Darryn Reid

author_darryn-reid — Darryn Reid (biography)

How can we harness incommensurability as a pivotal enabler of cross-disciplinary collaboration?

Effective cross-disciplinary research across multiple traditional disparate fields of study hinges on logical incommensurability, which occurs because, in general, those ideas will have been constructed using incompatible frameworks to solve distinct problem formulations within dissimilar intellectual traditions.

In other words, the internal logical consistency of a discipline’s way of approaching problems is no guarantee of ability to be integrated with another discipline’s way of approaching problems. Incommensurability should come as no surprise to anyone involved in cross-disciplinary activities. What is pivotal here, however, is the view that incommensurability is not an obstacle to be avoided or feared but an enabler.

Interdisciplinary competencies and innovation

June 3, 2021November 24, 2020

By Colleen Knechtel

author_colleen-knechtel — Colleen Knechtel (biography)

What interdisciplinary competencies are required for innovation? How can such interdisciplinary competencies be implemented to foster innovation?

Keys to stimulating innovation are cultivating interdisciplinary mindsets and skillsets. Interdisciplinary mindsets involve recognizing diverse knowledge to enable collaboration to enhance collective creativity, whereas interdisciplinary skillsets embrace relational competencies, work experiences, the sciences, humanities, trades and technologies. Integrating such diverse knowledge and skills is key to innovation.

Strategies for implementing interdisciplinary competencies

1. Recognizing prior knowledge and skills

Navigating paradoxical tensions through both/and thinking

July 1, 2021November 17, 2020

By Faye Miller

author_faye-miller — Faye Miller (biography)

How can the many paradoxical tensions that arise in transdisciplinary projects be effectively navigated?

My recent research into how to produce shared understanding for digital and social innovation identifies three key tenets for navigating paradoxes as an emerging transdisciplinary method:

Identifying paradoxical tensions;
Moving from either/or to both/and thinking; and
Working through paradoxes to workable certainty or negotiated understanding.

Identifying paradoxical tensions

A paradox involves contradictory-yet-interrelated elements that exist simultaneously, which morph, shift and persist over time. Increasing our focus on paradoxes fosters the development of creative and innovative mindsets encouraging transdisciplinary researchers to employ both logic and intuition in their approaches.

Valuing diversity: The good, the original and the outsider

February 15, 2023August 18, 2020

By Frédéric Darbellay

author_frederic-darbellay — Frédéric Darbellay (biography)

Stay in the norm, transform it or transgress it? If many researchers and teachers are comfortable in their disciplinary fold and providing good and loyal service to a well-defined epistemic community, more atypical profiles are also emerging, contributing to inter- and trans- disciplinary diversity.

I explore three complementary figures likely to cover the spectrum going from a good and respectable disciplinary worker (the Good) to the more disturbing figure of the Outsider, with the Original in between.

But first I want to share some reflections on how originality is (not) valued.

Originality in an uncertain world

Originality seems to be one of the supreme values of the knowledge economy, increasingly promoted in times of change and uncertainty. I, you, we all have to be original to find new solutions to old, new and future problems.

Theory U: A promising journey to embracing unknown unknowns

September 24, 2021February 25, 2020

By Vanesa Weyrauch

author-venesa-weyrauch — Vanesa Weyrauch (biography)

How can we best live in a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) world? How can we shift from a worldview that looks to predict and control what is to be done through plans and strategies to being present and flexible in order to respond effectively as unexpected changes take place? How can we be open to not knowing what will emerge and embrace uncertainty as the opportunity to co-create and learn?

One powerful and promising way forward is Theory U, a change methodology developed by Otto Scharmer and illustrated below. Scharmer introduced the concept of “presencing”—learning from the emerging future. The concept of “presencing” blends “sensing” (feeling the future possibility) and “presence” (the state of being in the present moment). It acknowledges that we don’t know the answers. Staying at the bottom of the U until the best potential future starts emerging requires embracing uncertainty as fertile soil.

Why do we protect ourselves from unknown unknowns?

January 12, 2023February 11, 2020

By Bem Le Hunte

author-bem-le-hunte — Bem Le Hunte (biography)

Why do very few people enjoy sitting comfortably with their unknown unknowns? Why is there an uncomfortable liminality ‘betwixt and between’ the known and unknown worlds?

How can we explore unknowns in a more speculative, playful, creative capacity, through our imaginations? How can we use lack of knowledge to learn about ourselves and let it teach us how to be comfortable and curious in the midst of unknowing?

The power and allure of unknown unknowns have long been recognised by creative practitioners as a holy grail for inspiration. Borges wrote in The Library of Babel about a fictitious library where all books ever written existed together, but this library turns to a dystopia as the reader discovers that “the certainty that everything has already been written annuls us, or renders us phantasmal.”

Creative writing as a journey into the unknown unknown

April 21, 2022October 22, 2019

By Lelia Green

Author - Lelia Green — Lelia Green (biography)

Do you use writing as a means of accessing your unconscious knowledge and understanding? The electric experience of things falling into place is a well-recorded outcome of ‘writing to find out what you want to say.’ E. L. Doctorow is credited with saying that writing a novel is “like driving at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way” (no formal reference identifiable, but see Quotation Celebration). There is a sense of allowing the unfolding journey to deliver you to your destination, and experiencing the energy rush when you arrive. It’s a matter of relinquishing control and being open to the unexpected.

Collaboration: From groan zone to growth zone

July 13, 2022May 28, 2019

By Carrie Kappel

What is the groan zone in collaboration? What can you do when you reach that point?

As researchers and practitioners engaged in transdisciplinary problem-solving, we know the value of diverse perspectives. We also know how common it is for groups to run into challenges when trying to learn from diverse ideas and come to consensus on creative solutions.

This challenging, often uncomfortable space, is called the groan zone. The term comes from Sam Kaner’s diamond model of participation shown in the figure below.

Idea tree: A tool for brainstorming ideas in cross-disciplinary teams

September 23, 2021March 12, 2019

By Dan Stokols, Maritza Salazar, Gary M. Olson, and Judith S. Olson

authors_dan-stokols_maritza-salazar-campo_gary-olson_judith-olson — 1. Dan Stokols (biography)
2. Maritza Salazar (biography)
3. Gary M. Olson (biography)
4. Judith S. Olson (biography)

How can cross-disciplinary research teams increase their capacity for generating and integrating novel research ideas and conceptual frameworks?

A key challenge faced by research teams is harnessing the intellectual synergy that can occur when individuals from different disciplines join together to create novel ideas and conceptual frameworks.

What can interdisciplinary collaborations learn from the science of team science?

September 29, 2021June 19, 2018

By Suzi Spitzer

How can we improve interdisciplinary collaborations? There are many lessons to be learned from the Science of Team Science. The following ten lessons summarize many of the ideas that were shared at the International Science of Team Science Conference in Galveston, Texas, in May 2018.

1. Team up with the right people
On the most basic level, scientists working on teams should be willing to integrate their thoughts with their teammates’ ideas. Participants should also possess a variety of social skills, such as negotiation and social perceptiveness. The most successful teams also encompass a moderate degree of deep-level diversity (values, perspectives, cognitive styles) and include women in leadership roles.