Our workshop at the ISMICK 2006

My colleagues Marloes and Joseph and I gave our workshop on tuesday. We worked very hard with a group of 40 people. In small groups the design principles for knowledge productivity were discussed and the presented case was analysed.

A selection of our experiences and points of discussion:

• People recognised the design principles from their own practice and found the principles very interrelated.
• The principles were considered to be used in various cultures. However the ‘rules’ vary per culture and that is something you have to take into account. The question is: to what extent do you connect to the existing rules and to what extent do you break them for the sake of innovation?
• Would it be possible to have an innovation practice in which all the design principles are actively used? Or is it inevitable and even desirable that some are worked with actively whereas others are of less importance at a certain stage of the process?
• To what extent do people need to be involved in an innovation practice as an individual and when are the organisations behind them involved?
• Some people missed the aspect of power that is always an issue in innovation practices. Shouldn’t there be an extra principle that touches upon this? Some participants suggested that some innovations wouldn’t have been realised without someone using his/her power for forcing a decision.