• Encourage bantering, puns, riddles and practical jokes in everyday team work
• Seek reversal of logic and inversions of concepts and assumptions
• Play with words by exploring metaphors, games of association and inventing new word combinations
• Explore peculiar & strange ideas
• Conduct ritual cleansing of undiscussables and bad habits
• Create and mark space for play

Readings for inspiration

Koestler, A (1966). The Act of Creation. Pan Books Ltd

Bakhtin, M. M. (1986) Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. University of Texas Press.

See the previous Drivers of the Month

Their paper was judged by independent reviewers as one of the Top 50 articles out of 15,000 articles published across all organization theory and the business disciplines in 2009. The award recognizes the world’s best literature in management across such outlets as Academy of Management Journal, Administrative Sicence Quarterly, Academy of Management Review and Organization Science and all other top journals in the field.

Professor Stewart Clegg and Dr. Tyrone Pitsis, University of Technology, Sydney.

Kjersti Bjørkeng says: “I am honored and overwhelmed to receive this award. So are my co-authors Stewart Clegg and Tyrone Pitsis. The paper is an empirical paper exploring alliancing in construction management. We show how an alliance project develops a common sense of purpose. As a result the partners practice a collaborative normative control, thus achieving far fewer deviations and variations than traditional design and construction contracts. We greatly appreciate the recognition of our work and our findings that this award entail.”

“It is quite rare for a qualitative paper on a single case study to acieve such recognition”, says Arne Carlsen, Project Leader of Idea Work. “This is a truly magnificent accomplishment that demonstrates the value of the extensive international collaboration in Idea Work- and a great inspiration to all of us for the many articles and books  now underway.”

The tool is now being tested and further developed at Thommessen, SpareBank1 and Snøhetta.

Following up with the 26th EGOS Colloquium on Organizational Ethnography: Assessing its Impact in Lisbon from  June 28-July 3, Hagen and Rudningen are contributing with their paper Smoke on the water: Explaining the inexplicable by using film-elicitation on architects in Oslo and New York.

Two idea work papers have also been accepted to the 28th Standing Conference on
Organizational Symbolism (SCOS) in Lille – France, July 7-10, 2010, including Coldevin, G. H. and Rudningen, G. (2010) Same but different: Customized creation of visual texts to inspire critical reflection.

And finally, the 70th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management have accepted three idea work papers for their 2010 conference in Montréal, August 6-10, 2010.

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Thougths about creativity are often filled with clichés and myths. What do Snøhetta’s architects, Point Carbon’s analysts and StatoilHydro’s geologists do when they are at their best? The Idea Work project investigates what Norway’s most successful companies are doing in their daily work.

What is driving good ideas forward?

Representatives from each of these internationally leading companies presented their idea work and drivers for innovative practices at the BIA day for user-driven research-based innovation, 28th of April 2009.

Astrid Renata Van Veen, Project Manager, Snøhetta

Atle Christiansen, Founder/Business Development Manager, Point Carbon

Pål Haremo, Head of Geologists, StatoilHydro

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Researchers in Idea Work presented these papers at the conference:

• Bygdås, A.L., Lundberg, M and Rudningen, G. «Studying Organisational Creativity in Everyday Practices – mysteries, methods and multiplicities»

• Gjerstad, R. and Haugstad, B. «Idea Work and Types of Activity Systems»

• Hagen, A.L., Mortensen, T. and Rudningen, G. «How to recognize a point in a turning stream of ideas − and what’s keeping the ideas alive?»

• Haugstad, B., Bjørkeng, K. and Håkonsen G. «Creative Inquiries in Collaborative Action Research»

• Bjørkeng, K. «Business and Pleasure – On Integrating Diversities in Organizational Practices»

The conference was held from July 2-4 at ESADE Business School in Barcelona, Spain. Read more about the 25th EGOS Colloquium here.

Read more here.