The Autopoietic Model of Ideation

In the recent times, there has been a paradigm shift from an “Informational Age” to a “Conceptual Age”; i.e.  there is shift from labour-intensive work to knowledge-intensive work- in other words, making full use of your creativity in obtaining added value outcomes. Every day, we come across various complex and dynamic problems, which require out of the box thinking and optimal use of your creativity. To enhance and nurture this creativity, we need to provide a suitable environment to it, which does not curb it. At the same time, we have to focus not only on the creative outcome, but also the creative process that it follows.
1) Intrinsic nature of creativity: A process can be considered creative without referring to others’ evaluation of the product. It might be possible that a similar idea has been presented before, but considering its intrinsic nature, more focus should be given on what led to the need of such a creation and how it was approached.
2) Contingent nature of creativity: Sources of creativity are quite diverse and circumstantial. They are often built on the study of various inventions, and they emerge out of not only good ideas but ideas that might be considered useless or wrong. Creative processes do not follow any laws, but at the same time they are not random generations.
3) Collaboration in creativity: Collaboration of an individual with other individuals brings an added value to the process with cannot be attained by a single individual. This way the process sees through a culmination of various sparks, which enables it to achieve an optimal solution. Team work, which is a very generic term, generally brings better results as compared to a single individual.

An important theory which encompasses this entire ideation process is the concept of “autopoiesis”- a system of self-production and self-creation; where the system produces units which comprise the system, in other words, a self-sustaining solution to a problem. It is not just about innovating, but it’s also about narrowing down to the domain, the social segment which particularly requires attention over an issue, and also about the affordability of the solution.

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