Society, our work, and our everyday lives require us all to be more innovative and more intentional. Since around 500BC when the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus allegedly noted that ‘Change is the only constant’, the world has been in flux. This has not only continued, but it has accelerated.
If we want to develop more innovators, we need to provide spaces that allow for innovators to develop.
Responding to this challenge requires everyone to be ready and skilled in how to think more strategically about change, adaption, and innovation. Higher education institutions are a great place to hone these innovation skills, for both the students and the staff that fill them. But for these skills to be taught, the spaces that support this kind of learning need to be appropriate. This need is for the continued relevance of the institution itself but also for the society around it. There must be more innovation both inside and outside of the institution. If we want to develop more innovators, we need to provide spaces that allow for innovators to develop.
The Importance of Developing Innovators
For people to be innovative in their work, they need to learn the skills of incremental innovation. How it happens, what it looks like, how you get from the starting point to the deployment, and to fundamentally understand that deployment is not the end of the process. This is the kind of understanding that employers are beginning to expect from their employees. Continuous improvement is using innovation skills in everyday work and required structured collaboration. It is how institutions and the alumni from them continue to be relevant in this ever-changing world.
Innovations vs. Innovators
Developing innovations and developing innovators are different. One is an investment in your core business (or future business opportunities) while the other is an investment in people. This investment in people will provide them some agency over the development of how they do (and develop) their own work. To support individuals to become innovators in their own areas of expertise, we need to give them the right spaces to learn those skills and then to deploy them.
The necessary skills are not going to be developed in traditional classrooms or in ordinary meeting rooms.
The necessary skills are not going to be developed in traditional classrooms or in ordinary meeting rooms. There needs to be environmental cues (both physical and atmospheric) that this space is different. That you are here to work differently and to learn differently. It must also indicate that we are here to work collaboratively and that we are willing to change how we interact and work together to get different results.
Tailoring Spaces for Impactful Collaboration
Different actions and outcomes have different needs and what the space provides. It is difficult to have a deep, personal conversation if a group of people are sitting at desks looking in one direction (away from each other and at the back of heads). Different configurations are needed for different parts of any innovation process whether this is in a company, an educational institution, or in a public service.
Discussion
When there is a discussion, whether it is for learning new things or for sharing knowledge, a circle is often the way this should be done. Everyone can see each other, it promotes communication, and it isn’t hierarchical. Research shows that if you want people to be more collaborative, feel a sense of belonging, and participate more, you should seat them in a circular pattern.
This gathering pattern is something that is quintessentially human. When we imagine small groups gathering at all times through history, we imagine circles. We see circles everywhere information is shared and discussions are had: campfires, grade school storytelling, the United Nations, U.S. Congress, the Finnish Parliament, indigenous peoples’ gatherings, healing circles, etc. Gathering in circles is essential to humans feeling seen and heard.
“Circular physical arrangements such as these endure because of the powerful influences that people can have on each other when participating in these formations.” – J. Falout, 2014
Ideation
When we need to do some intense ideation, we may or may not need tables. Or we may need a small table space to write or draw our idea and some clear wall space to display our ideas. This one part of the process will need to use two different kinds of spaces. This flexibility in spatial design becomes a catalyst for fostering flexible minds. If there is a need to create more innovative and flexible people in our organisations, then the spaces that they work in also need to reflect this. Traditional office setups, with cubicles and open offices, fall short in being able to cultivate true innovators.
Small group work
Ideas are often developed by small groups. Individuals can be too myopic (seeing only their own ideas) while too big groups will become unwieldy and stagnate as it becomes difficult to find consensus to move on. This means that there needs to be spaces where groups of 3-5 people can develop ideas into concepts. These concepts will need to be developed further into something that can be prototyped. This can only happen in smaller groups. This is a great opportunity to either have multiple different ideas taken to the prototype stage or to have different versions of the same thing be created. This gives everyone a chance to fully participate in the development and prototyping stages as well as to see the options that different groups can produce. There is never one solution to any given problem.
Building/prototyping
When an individual and a group wish to build a prototype or even two or three, having spaces and tools available to accomplish this is important. Prototypes, for both products and services, come in all shapes and sizes – from room-sized cardboard layouts to handheld tools and Lego floor plans. This means that you can never be sure if people will need tables to display their final prototypes or just need them in the building phase. If they just need them in the building phase, they may need a larger open bit of floor space to roleplay the service/product or to walk people through it. This means that tables need to be easily stored away.
Presentations/Pitches
Presenting as a skill, whether to your peers or to co-workers, is an important part of finding buy-in and being understood. Presenting to a group can be done either while they are seated in the circular position or in a more standard theatre pattern. But what research tells us is that a circular seating pattern “can activate fundamental human needs and consequently affect persuasion.” When you are pitching an idea to a group, a circular pattern can help persuade them to agree with you. Interesting research finding that may be useful for those people who find themselves in that situation and can affect the environment and how people are seated.
All Spaces Are Designed
It is important to understand that spaces are always designed. Someone makes a decision about what kind of furniture will be used, where the focus of the room will go, how much furniture is to be ordered. Each little decision is the design. Determining how the space will be used will define what is available for the users.
When Static Spaces Fail to Meet Dynamic Needs
Consider this: what happens when the needs of the space are dynamic and change even within the confines of one 3-hour block? What happens to those in the room when the space is not changeable? At some point a decision was made to define the space’s purpose, closing the door to any alternative considerations. This is most of the built spaces around the world. When we look at learning and teaching environments, they are primarily organised so that the students look at the teacher or to teach professional skills. Neither of these are appropriate for learning or developing innovation skills.
The next evolution was to make desks movable, so students could participate in group work. But still the desks took up most of the classroom floor space. Again, what happens when you don’t really need the desks and what you need is for people to do less listening and more doing? Now the desks are a bit of a liability. It reminds me of the poster that compared different modes of transportation and the space they take up (car vs bus vs bicycle). It exemplifies how much space “things” take up in the surrounding space. In their example it was cars, in mine, it is desks.
Many are expecting different results from the same environment.
I don’t disagree that there are still concepts that need to be learned individually and, in an orientation, where you are looking at a teacher. But it is important to remember that this is not how everything needs to be taught. Increasingly, spaces are being set aside for different ways of learning. But they are rare and maybe not fully understood.
This is the same problem in many corporate settings. Many are expecting different results from the same environment. In big companies there may be open spaces available but they are not necessarily set up for impactful collaboration, some will be meeting spaces, some will be presentation spaces.
Shaping Tomorrow’s Innovators
We all need to make sure that our learning spaces are future focused and fit for purpose.
The goal is to make sure that both inside and outside educational institutions people are able to confidently face and address the challenges ahead. We all need to make sure that our learning spaces are future focused and fit for purpose. At the beginning of allocating learning spaces and planning teaching, it would be important to considering the five above needs: discussion, ideation, group work, prototyping, and presentations, to achieve the best learning outcomes.
Writer
Pamela Spokes, BA, MA, MBA, AmO works as a Service Designer in Metropolia’s RDI team. Originally from Canada, Pamela has many years of experience working in higher education institutions in different countries and in different roles. She teaches the English Pre-Incubator Programme and Service Design in different Schools.
Ei kommentteja