Idea Work combines approaches from action research and experiential learning with the focus on positive deviance in Positive Organizational Scholarship.
This includes designing and facilitating processes for improving idea generation through use of highly engaging visuals and low-tech prototyping, as well as using film and web-based tools.
We do research with our partners, not on them. We believe reflective practitioners are valuable co-creators of theory and that researchers have responsibilities for creating theories that have an impact on local practices, the languages of local practices and the realms of possibilities for action and becoming that people see in their work.
Our research is informed by four sets of literature:
1) A recently strengthened stream of research that has an explicit focus on creativity and imagination inherent in everyday work.
2) Contributions from the practice-based approaches within organisation studies and anthropology. What do people in organisations actually do when doing idea work?
3) A set of literatures dealing with sources of energy, meaning and positive identity construction enabling and emanating from idea work. What are the motivational drivers of idea work? What energises people doing idea work?
4) Literature on aesthetic-, and arts-based research practices, including film ethnography, dramaturgy, positive imagery and metaphor theory.