Process v. Spaces

Over the years, I’ve given much thought to the creative process. Some ideas were simple. Some ideas were complex. Today I find myself believing in a basic model, as I’ve written before, where creativity leads to strategy leads to creativity.

But, of course, this is a story arc to creative development and not a plan of action. Specific subset activities must fill out this arc.

So the question is this: how do you structure these subset activities so you balance restriction with freedom to avoid a form-filling, mechanical process that assumes it is always the right approach to any problem?

Challenged by this for quite some time, I found this HBR article by Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO. The article is OK, but two sentences crystallized a feeling I’ve had about creative development but been unable to nail down:

“The design process is best described metaphorically as a system of spaces rather than a predefined series of orderly steps. The spaces demarcate different sorts of related activities that together form the continuum of innovation.”

That’s really smart.

What Tim so brilliantly points out is that creative development should be modular. Rather than a process – an orderly series of steps which much be repetitively followed, agencies/firms should have a collection of predefined “spaces” that offer specific rules, activities and outcomes. Each space would have different rules, different key players and different outcomes.

To me, the idea of “spaces” strikes the perfect balance between constraint and freedom. The idea allows agencies/firms to piece together – from a pre-existing “toolbox of spaces” – a tailored journey towards a creative solution.