Idea work : lessons of the extraordinary in everyday creativity

Forfattere: Arne Carlsen, Stewart Clegg, Reidar Gjersvik

What does it take to find oil in an area where many have tried, but failed? What does it take to design buildings that become prize-winning cultural landmarks? And what can the best architects, oil explorers, business lawyers, journalists, and business developers within banking and trading analysis have in common? Idea Work can provide the answers. This book builds on a four-year research project and describes what extraordinary idea work looks like in practice. The authors take you behind the scenes of some of Norway's leading companies and show how surprisingly similarly they work when they are working creatively to develop and realize new ideas. The book gives us, for example, a glimpse of how Snøhetta designed the Opera and the 9/11 memorial, and how explorers at Statoil discovered the most oil of all oil companies in the world in 2011. Narratives are presented on how prepping, sketches, pin-ups, drama, wonder, and punk are important aspects of the extraordinary. Examples are supported by theory, placing this book at the forefront of international research. Idea Work will appeal to practitioners as well as students. It recounts engaging stories from actual production processes and combines new theoretical perspectives with practical advice. It will also be of interest to anyone working with development, particularly with developing new ideas. From a professional standpoint, this book is an uncommon contribution to describing and understanding creativity as something collective and grounded in everyday activity. Idea Work is available in both English and Norwegian. Endorsements: «Prepare to be surprised. This book on idea work significantly enriches how we see, understand and do the everyday work of making ideas transformative. The book is simultaneously simple and profound, playful and serious, practical and theoretical. No doubt it will be useful and used by anyone who is curious about how ideas become real in everyday activities. The book both makes the process of idea work accessible and mysterious at the same time. No matter what your interest is in idea work, read a page, read a chapter, read the whole book - any engagement with the book will excite novel thought and practical advice - a rare and pleasing combination.» Jane Dutton, Robert L. Kahn Distinguished University Professor of Business Administration and Psychology, University of Michigan «A great addition to the literature on organizational creativity» Distinguished Research Professor Gareth Morgan, Schulich School of Business, York University, Toronto «Idea Work is a journey that makes you believe in the magic of ideas all over. It reminded me about what is best at work: creating something uniquely impactful with the help of daring wonder, some joint laughter and a little bit of anarchism for spice.» Välikangas Liisa, Professor in Organization and Management, Aalto University/Co-founder at Innovation Democracy «This book is an explosive package of insight, cutting edge methodology, ready-to-implement instruments and elevating inspiration. Exciting to glance and compelling to read systematically, the book walks its talk. It is perhaps the most uplifting and yet realistic book on organizational innovation and creativity I know. Deeply embracing the seemingly mundane actions of pratitioners in a number of different fields, the book is an empirically informed synthetic conceptualization of positively deviant organizational creativity. While scholarly impressive and highly useful as a guide to the frontiers of the research, the book entirely avoids the pitfalls of overtheorizing. The book sets your ideas in motion - and in ways that will take you by surprise. The book "activates the drama" of your internal angels of creativity, inspires your "craving wonder", will encourage you "to zoom out" and look with "daring imagination" for possibilities of "punk production". Idea work starts to emerge - in the reader of Idea Work.» Esa Saarinen, Professor of Applied Philosophy at the School of Science, Aalto University «Idea Work is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding and - not least - practising everyday organizational creativity. The book's focus on collective creative practices is highly innovative and will prove invaluable to organizations that care about being on the leading edge of what they do.» Professor Bent Flyvbjerg, Chair of Major Programme Management, University of Oxford, author of «Making Social Science Matter» «It is a rare book that celebrates the life, passion, and wonder of ideas at work. It is a rare book that is as at home with professionals who long for sound practical advice about how to work with ideas more effectively, as it is with business scholars who long for sound theoretical abstractions to explain such work more sensitively and completely. It is a rare book about creativity that is itself creative in its form and style; that marries the vibrant nuances of real world stories with the incisiv...