The ability to install an atmosphere of play and laughter to build social ties, relax constraints in thinking and encourage original combinations of knowledge.
Tips for good practice
- 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.
Previous Driver of the Month
Generative Resistance
Acknowledging doubt, friction, anomalies and resistance, not as noise to be avoided, but levers to question the given and enhance imagination in everyday work
Tips for good practices
•Facilitate both external and internal peer resist
•Practice of prolonged conversations
•Maintain tradition but question authority
•Ask ‘what if…? and ‘how ..?’ Repeat.
•Foster collective tolerance for risk and failure by sharing wins and failures
•Frame questions positively by pointing to common unknowns and needs.
Readings for inspiration
Altshuller, G. S., 1984. Creativity as an Exact Science. Gordon and Breach Publishers, Luxembourg.
Locke, K., Golden-Biddle, K. & Feldman, M. (2008.) Making Doubt Generative: Rethinking the role of doubt in the research process. Organization Science 19(6): 907 – 918.