Innovation Spaces at the Workplace
“Lost is a possible multiplicity of natures - Ludens (playing), narrans (storytelling), … - as rationality slowly is made synonymous with economic rationality and as homo oeconomicus is centered.” - Daniel Hjorth (2005)
Do we need more innovation spaces in workplaces of today? No, not architecturally, but psychologically?
It is time we rewire our limiting beliefs about the thinking space we create within our “serious” workplaces and redesign it to encourage imagination, art, play and creativity. I believe it is no longer a “good to have” but a must-have for innovative future.
Wondering how to encourage these spaces? Read on to find out..
Reclaiming Imagination
When children play we applaud them for the imaginative spaces that they create in their minds. The place around them suspends from their reality and slowly transforms into a space as per the rules of the play at hand, a figment of their imaginative thinking. This imaginative space is filled with unreal possibilities and when presented with problems specific to their newly developed space they come up with solutions that are partially based on their inner worlds and partially within the reality of the outside world.
Our innate ability to play around with the idea of “What could be” and imagine a future of possibilities is what fuels any kind of invention and innovation. However, somehow when it comes to adults building imaginative space for themselves, they are ridiculed for being childish, silly or overly playful, until an AI comes up with the same solution.
If imagination and innovation are intertwined in intricate ways then why are they always at odds with each other. We may have to travel a bit back in time to dismantle this belief. Back to the times when the idea of Homo Oeconomicus and Homo Ludens were first researched.
Homo Oeconomicus vs Homo Ludens
On one end of the spectrum, we adorn the hats of the Homo oeconomicus, the prototype of the rational version of humans developed by John Stuart Mill (1836), which builds the basis of all economic theory that places rational decision making at its core. On the other end of the spectrum, is the Homo Ludens, the version of us that gives importance to play, imagination, culture, art and creativity, a concept developed by Johan Huizinga (1938).
It is believed that the start of the Scientific Revolution marks the moment in history when the ideas of passion, art, nature and body were lost to the need for rationality. The popular opinion became that a place of serious work always puts the rational version of ourselves in the forefront, and requires us to shed the skin of our personality that values the role of play, imagination, art and creativity. This has also led to the belief that somehow the Homo oeconomicus and the Homo Ludens hardly ever exist together.
However, in a world in which “Think Big” has almost become the norm, we are finally embracing a time in which we need to find or create a space where the two versions can complement each other. A space where innovation and imagination within us combine. In other words, we need heterotopias.
Let me tell you what they are.
Heterotopias - The “Other” Spaces
The works of Michel De Certeau, a French intellectual and scholar (among many other titles), worked extensively in understanding the silent transformations that we make between the official or strategic aspects and the playful, witty and cunning creativities that exist in everyday lives (de Certeau, 1984 as cited in Hjorth, 2005). Through his works, he differentiated between the idea of a place and a space. He characterised place as a configuration of positions that indicate stability and order in relation to each other, whereas the space takes into consideration the mobile elements that do not have the stability of specific order and hence does not have proper form. A place stays, whereas a space moves.
This demarcation of a place and space makes its way into understanding the idea of play and imagination. Within the act of play or any creatively inclined activity that could result in imagination we typically enter a state of flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990), during which our creation or imaginative thinking moves from being situated in a place of order to a space focused on actions that are not present in reality but could be present in a distant future. We “play” with the idea of a scenario that is not our reality at the moment but could be part of an imagined space. Amidst this flow of imaginative thinking we move from being situated in a place to occupying a space. Much like a child involved in pretend play, mentioned earlier. These spaces that we create are called heterotopias.
The idea of heterotopia or “other” spaces, can be described as the space that you create between the place that one occupies (for example, the living room), and one that is created when you engage in imagination and (serious) play (for example, a child who pretends to be in another planet, while playing in the living room). The concept of heterotopia was further advanced by the philosopher Michel Foucault (1966) who elaborated it as a place that contests both the imaginative and the real, within the space we live in. These are spaces, he suggested, that are created when we remove some parts of the real place around us in order to give way to imagination, and creativity.
I argue that these spaces could be conducive to thriving the Homo Ludens in us, which is to say that creating these spaces could only amount to igniting those parts of ourselves that value art, creativity, story-telling, imagination and play. However, as per the general assumption, we sadly limit these creative endeavours to a few or often believe that these are aspects of personalities that can only be brought out to the limelight during the weekends, popularly coined as the “Sunday culture” (Findlen, 1998).
But heterotopias exist even when we are at work. Here’s how.
Think about the person you are when you leave home to work. You are one version of yourself on the way to work, and then another when you enter your office. You almost automatically know that within this space of work, you have to change roles, demeanour, and the skill sets that you are expected to showcase - for example, you turn into an entrepreneur, a Founder, an investor, a manager and so on. Within this place of work, you are more often than not firefighting problems or attaining goals that are relevant and timebound but also dynamic, and you seek solutions that make sense in the current scenarios that you encounter. Even though your place of work does not change in order, the scenarios you encounter more or less move around. Once the day or the week is done, you resume being in touch with all the other parts of yourself as you adorn the different roles that you play in the rest of your life.
So isn't this a heterotopia at work?
During the global pandemic, we constantly lived through heterotopias, when we had to deploy our imagination to transform our living places into spaces of work, simply by putting on our office attire (with pyjama bottoms), while attending our official meetings in our living rooms, or bedrooms. As Hjorth suggests, in today's world, the expectation that work Emails and calls need to be attended, no matter where we are, turns our mobile phones into “microsuperiors” in our pockets that urges us to find tactical space for the creation of heterotopias.
Silent Transformations
The only question that remains is that, if these silent transformations between places and spaces occur, then why is it that we denounce the idea of play, imagination, creativity and the like into the marginal (Hjorth, 2005).
Leaving out the art and playfulness to those who deem themselves as artists, simply means shunning a part of us which could be beneficial for the imagination of a future of work. In order to navigate through a world that focuses its attention in creating newer experiences through constant innovation calls to the imaginative minds of Homo Ludens, who playfully suspend their thinking from reality to build imaginative futures that could then turn into possibilities with the rational minds of the Homo oeconomicus within us.
Defining work places that do not open the possibilities of creating alternate futures through the work of our imagination isn’t conducive to the world that we live in today. Think about this, every rational mind in an organisation is expected to build a future that appeals to the Homo Luden aspect within us - the parts of us that are interested in creating and experimenting with varying visions of our futures. The part of us that enjoys playfulness also buys into the imaginative worlds that are not our reality at the moment, and I believe that tying ourselves only to rationality at all times can only take us so far. To be able to conjure up a world that is filled with possibilities, we need to keep the Homo Ludens in us alive. And for this we need the imaginative, creative, artistic and limitless inner child within us to be present in the heterotopias that we create at work.
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In his novel, The Gods Themselves, the science fiction novelist Isaac Asimov describes a Para-universe in which there are the Rationals, the Emotionals and the Parentals. Each of these species are structured differently and serve different purposes within that Universe. In Asimov’s imagined future, he shows that while they are deemed to serve different purposes, the union of all three aspects becomes greater than the sum of the individual purposes they serve. Though this novel is set in a future in which Earth has established communication with a Para-universe, we are currently living at a time when the future possibilities look no less like a science fiction novel. So shouldn’t we be taking cues from authors like Asimov and ignite the Homo Ludens within all of us in order to be able to live up and buy into these imagined futures that can be carefully constructed and tested by the rational Homo oeconomicus that also reside within us.
More importantly, don't we need our playful selves to be present in order to create multiple versions of imaginary futures for ourselves and the world we live in.
Are you interested in redefining your workplace to include in a space where innovation is always brewing? Look no further! The Quaint Space is provides Creative Business workshops that believe in combining imagination, innovation and creativity. Start your innovation with us Today! Contact us to know more!
This essay is inspired by the works of Daniel Hjorth (2005). I am currently working on building my own research in this area, so if you are interested in discussing more about building imaginative spaces within your team or workplace, do reach out to me. I am open to collaborating and working with you to help build playful and imaginative minds at workplaces.
I also have a suggested reading list on this topic for any of you who would like to read more. In case you are interested in collaborating with me on this research, I humbly request you to please cite this work and reach out to me!
