Tablecloths for Idea Generation

I recently organised a workshop with Sara Jones of City University, London. Sara wanted to use the Digital Shoreditch Festival as an opportunity to generate new and useful ideas on ‘How to foster a culture of collaboration between universities and industry’.

The festival brings together diverse participants from start-ups, SMEs, large companies and academia for a series of talks and panel discussions. The diversity of the participants provided a great opportunity to get input from a wide range of interesting people.

However, running an idea generation workshop between conference presentations and panel discussions presented us with some challenges.Continue reading “Tablecloths for Idea Generation”

Advertisement

Creativity is a Feeling

Have you read Making is Connecting by David Gauntlett? It’s a great book about creative collaboration and how this enhances creativity, creates a sense of community and improves individual happiness. If you are interested in creativity, collaboration and change I’d recommend you read it.Continue reading “Creativity is a Feeling”

Twitter: The Amplifier and the Fishing Rod

If Twitter was an object what would it be for you?I was speaking with the social media director of a large company recently and he described Twitter as the amplifier in the social media system.
His company posts interesting content into different platforms (Facebook, Pinterest, blogs etc.) They know it will be read by the users of those platform and reach a significant number of people. Tweeting about the content brings their message to the attention of a much broader audience. His experiments show that Tweeting will increase the number of people reading the information by 10 to 100 fold. In some cases 1000 times more people will read the content. His point was well made, Twitter amplifies your social media messages and many businesses use Twitter for exactly this reason.Continue reading “Twitter: The Amplifier and the Fishing Rod”

Enterprise Social Networks: Build It and They Will Come (Maybe)

Build it and they will come (maybe)

Enterprise social networks (like Yammer or Jive) are great for sharing information, having conversations and developing ideas.

I seen a number of businesses implement enterprise social networks. I know that some of them have been disappointed with the outcomes. They’ve invested in the implementation and roll out. Technically the implementations have been great. Yet people post comments like:

‘This is cool. What do we do with it?’Continue reading “Enterprise Social Networks: Build It and They Will Come (Maybe)”

Capture the Creative Energy of Everyone in your Organisation

Innovation Challenges (Image by HikingArtist.com)

Have you thought of running innovation challenges? They can:

  • solve your most pressing problems
  • increase productivity, reduce costs
  • capture the creative energy of everyone in your organisation

They’re engaging, interesting and motivating.Continue reading “Capture the Creative Energy of Everyone in your Organisation”

Time your Tweets for Maximum Impact

Photo by Krystn Palmer Photography. Used under a Creative Commons License.
When you Tweet has a big impact on how effectively you get your message across.
If you’re organising a Tweet campaign you have to think about your tatget audience. Ask yourself when they will be most receptive to the message you want to deliver. Then time your Tweets so they have the maximum impact.Continue reading “Time your Tweets for Maximum Impact”

Social Creativity = People + Appropriate Technology

A Model for Social Creativity
Crowdsourcing, collaboration, co-creation – there’s a lot of interest in how to involve more people in creative processes. It is often referred to as ‘social creativity’.

But do we really understand how to combine people, technology and creativity to generate new solutions?
Here’s a simple four step model that can help commercial organisations, not-for-profits and social enterprises:Continue reading “Social Creativity = People + Appropriate Technology”

Creativity – Making Sense of the Mystery

Creativity is rather mysterious. What is creativity? How are people creative? Are some ideas more creative than others?

I thought I’d share some of the concepts that have helped my understanding of creativity. Hopefully they’ll be of use to you too.Continue reading “Creativity – Making Sense of the Mystery”