Coffee House CreativeA Design Experiment with a Social Conscience

Where Good Ideas Come From?I don’t know about you, but for me and the work I do, this is a pretty important question. Perhaps you’ve read Steven Johnson’s book by the same title, perhaps not. Either way, let me share with you why it’s important enough for me to be writing this.

Ideas - in all their wonderful shapes and sizes - are the lifeblood of innovation, and these precious little commodities are also the daily grind for you and I.

Mr. Johnson has an interesting idea. Looking back over the history of innovation, he suggests that good ideas emerge out of strikingly similar environments. In short: high-density, liquid networks of creative thinkers given both the opportunity and the forum for “spillover” of ideas.

A primordial soup of creative opportunity.

It’s intuitive really. Johnson brings a myriad of examples from nature, commerce and the sciences, but the one that stuck with me was the coffee house phenomenon of the early Renaissance period.

Creative thinkers from all walks of life would coalesce around the coffee shop and, in a caffeine-fueled frenzy, exchange ideas that invariably led to bigger, better, more diverse creations than anyone could have imagined.

Of course, Johnson also points out that up until this point, beer and wine had been the staple drinks of the day, and as such the creative revolution may have simply been a factor of a long overdue stint of sobriety – but we’ll ignore that for now.

So what’s my point?

Where’s our coffee shop?

Starbucks isn’t cutting it. Nor is any other coffee shop I’ve been to lately.

Last time I checked, the common scene in these much-loved establishments was one of the lone-creative-genius, half melting Frap in hand, Macbook planted firmly in the middle of the table, headphones resolutely plugged, vehemently repelling any suggestion of conversation from fellow coffee drinkers.

Hardly the picture of a hungry little carbon molecule just bursting to connect with some other friendly protein in the aforementioned primordial soup of creativity (ok, I’ll drop the soup bit now, but it’s just such a good metaphor).

The trouble is, while we talk a lot about convergence of media, channels, technologies and the like, we still have more creative specialties (read “silos”) than ever and we tend to mix in our own little cliques. We rarely, if ever, get to rub shoulders - let alone grey matter - with other more diverse creative talent, and we are poorer for it.

“But what about wonderful collaborative innovation networks like openIDEO?” you might ask. Good point, they are indeed awesome, and I’m a fully signed-up member.

But here’s the rub. Despite best intentions and a good platform for inspiring, conceptive ideas, it’s still predominantly individualistic, with little real development of ideas by the creative community engaged. People tend to rank and vote, but rarely “build”.

And this brings me to my point...[at last]

COPYWRITER NOVELIST INTERIOR DESIGNER

MICRO FINANCIER

PROGRAMMER

DOCUMENTARIAN

SPEECH WRITER TRAVELERCORRESPONDENT MUSICIAN

ARTIST

ANTHROPOLOGIST

JOURNALIST

PHOTOGRAPHERANIMATOR

ART DIRECTORINTERIOR DESIGNERTRAVELER

MUSICIAN

SINGER

DANCER

INDUSTRIAL DESIGNER

SET DESIGNER

MUSICIANMUSICIAN

TYPOGRAPHER

GRAPHIC DESIGNER

NGO CONSULTANT

PUPPETEER

CHANGE EXPERTURBAN PLANNER

GAME DESIGNER

SCREENWRITERSOUND TECHNICIANSCULPTOR

COMMUNICATIONSPROGRAMMER CORRESPONDENT MUSICIAN

The Coffee House Reborn

I’m putting together a little club of sorts - a new-age coffee house club in fact. In doing so, I’m hoping, to artificially recreate the environment that proved to be so fruitful over a millennium ago.

I’m inviting friends and friends of friends, all of whom represent great, old and new, creative disciplines. It’s a diverse bunch for sure, we’ll have artists, musicians, copy-writers, designers, speech-writers, creative technologists, architects, documentarians, urban planners, media strategists, industrial designers…the list goes on.

But we’re not just going to throw everyone in a room and hope for some kind of creative spontaneous combustion (although that might be fun). We’re going to be focused about this and here’s how...

A Tight Brief

Each time we meet, we’ll focus our efforts on a specific problem. We’ll experiment with different formats, in the spirit of, well, experimentation, but we’ll always work towards a goal.

A few examples;Remember the awesome openIDEO platform I mentioned before? They have some pretty tight briefs from organizations with real issues and with real budgets to make it happen – and we’re all for that.

So at one meet, we’ll take their brief, and then flex our combined and considerable creative muscle against it. We then take the (hopefully) many ideas we generate from our modest “closed network” of thinkers and upload them into the bigger “open-network” of openIDEO. We create the best of both worlds and have a jolly* good time in the process.

At other meets, we’ll work with slightly loftier, though perhaps more abstract ideas and see where our wonderings take us. We might look at ideas to foster greater volunteerism in the arts. We might work on adult literacy or childhood obesity.

As we gather momentum we’ll let our discussions shape future topics for collaboration, after all, even a tight brief needs some wriggle room. Ahem.

* I’m British and so have permission to use the word “jolly”

The Format:

I figured this should be fun, social and infused with food and drink. That way if we suck, at least we’ll have a full stomach to show for our efforts.

And I wanted to be honest to the idea - this originated in the coffee houses of northern italy, so, while a trip to Florence appeals, I’m settling for the generous offer of “The Local” to open their little independent coffee shop after hours for our first evening of mis-adventures.

We’ll have great coffee.

Location: “The Local” Sullivan Street, SohoTime: 6.30 for 7pm start. 9.30/10pm Close.

1. Arrivals: Drinks and hot food for all!2. Introduction to the event and intros (I’ll share short bios)3. The Briefing and Inspiration4. The Work

1. Two team breakout 2. Each group led by facilitator (me and a friend)3. Each group works on the brief, but with slight modification/constraint* to spur

different lines of exploration5. Group Share6. Each group shares and we have a discussion to build on the ideas7. Wrap up

1. Agreed ideas are applauded and we all commit to earnestly review them online over the next few weeks and build further as we have our shower-epiphanies and train ride inspirations. I’ll provide logon for the collaboration platform at the meeting.

8. The Action1. After a short window of online collaboration, the ideas are curated, polished and (if

and OpenIdeo brief) uploaded into the openIDEO platform under a single user logon. If it’s a self assigend brief we perhaps upload to a CHC tumblr or even better, find a way to make it happen

*creative thinking thrives on rules, so things like; “must be sustainable”, “must be under $1000 build cost”, “must be...” you get the idea.

My dream/charter for the results of our little endeavor, in descending order of likelihood…

• We first and foremost have fun. We get to enjoy the company of new creative minds and make new friendships and connections in the process.

• Our ideas are warmly received by the broader community. • Our ideas become a gold standard for quality creative solutions in

systems like the openIDEO collaboration model.• Steven Johnson is so overwhelmed by the genius and inferred

compliment he comes to speak and participate in an event.• We are so successful, IDEO bring the team for a workshop and

integrate the model into the next beta.• Word gets out and we are obliged to provide starter packs/

templates for the creation of a whole franchise across North America and ultimately global domination.

• The founder club members (me in particular) become rich and famous – if you’re already rich and famous, congratulations; some of us are still working on it. Oh, and the first round of beers are on you.

I created a logo. It’s a bit rubbish* because I’m a strategist, not a designer. Perhaps our resident designer will do a better job if we meet a second time – I am, if nothing else, ever the optimist.

So, are you in?

CoffeeHouseCreative

* yup, still British,