Authors:
ARNE CARLSSEN
STEWARD CLEGG
REIDAR GJERSVIK


Idea Work is about the collective practices of organizations that live from their ideas. It explores how an international architecture firm manages its idea processes from the first sketches to the finished building and beyond. The Book describes Idea Work as a collective practice, that can be found in many organizations, even in organizations that we do not normally think of as creative. The book place emphasis on how organizations are able to create context in which they can flourish and how collective effort is required to move from brilliant ideas to final results.

IDEA WORK IS…
What does it take to design buildings that become award-winning, culturally symbolic landmarks? What might the best architects have in common?
The book presents the key features of extraordinary “idea work”: Activities concerned with generating, selecting, realizing, nurturing, sharing, materializing, pitching and communicating ideas in organizations.

Academically, the concept of idea work responds to a recent stream of research that has an explicit focus on how creativity is inherent in everyday work and moves away from a previous research focus on individuals or laboratory settings. In the book are presented ten qualities of Idea Work that make up empirically grounded descriptions of precisely such processes, descriptions that will inspire further comparative and process-oriented research.
Idea work includes what we normally think of as creativity. It involves not only moments of creative breakthroughs but also all the major and minor activities that lead up to breakthroughs and follow from them, such as preparation and analysis, peer assistance and critique, or repeated interactions and experiments among users.

The ten qualities can be grouped in four overall categories that will be divided in next post in the “Book” category: Interwoven, Affective, Material and Controversial.

 

The book is available to purchase here:
https://www.cappelendamm.no/_idea-work-9788202403379