A Knowledge Cafe

A Knowledge Cafe at KAMP.

24 Nov 2007, Evening, 3 tables and one added a little later and not much participation from that table.

Started by posing the following open question
“What comes in the way of idea generation?”

My table Padhma, Prakasan, Navneet and myself came out with the following thought pieces, each were of course explained within a particular context.
Each table generated many such thoughts and followed it through till it was articulated well.

1. My ideas has never been looked at
2. Organization is not open to the idea that is being generated
3. Need for a variety of experience
From Experience - Thought - Idea - Expression or articulation of the idea
4. Lack of Diversity / In bred group
5. The very definition of an idea itself
6. Complacent or Not looking beyond
7. Experience to connect to different contexts and creating an idea; multiple such connections to get ideas
8. Problem to get ideas
9. Organization safety
10. There is no percieved value in the idea
11 Unable to get out of current context to value the idea

Next is each table presenting 2 of the best ideas from all that was generated.

And while presenting the contexts were remove and presented to the other group.
Presented below are all the ideas that came out from the 3 tables including ours.

1. The status quo is killing the idea or the idea is percieved as disruptive and the associated resistance
2. Person involved in generating the idea is emotionally attached to it and wants to take it to implementation himself
3. There is limited success of ideas in the past which is stopping me now
4. Lack of diversity
5. Ability to connect contexts
6. The teams or employees are not pushed to the wall to generate ideas

Next is each team is asked to present 2 ideas that could solve the issues listed above

1. Focussed intervention to actually apply and learn techniques that will generate ideas
2. Push forcefully to other context and enable contextual thinking