Dear reader,
It's been a while. I hope everyone is doing fine. I myself have been busy with Facebook campaigns, repairing my laptop and what not and somehow I have forgotten to write a post in the last couple of weeks. But here it is.
I have been reading the lovely PhD of prof. Byrge - just to capture the notion of the Creative Platform and to remind myself of different things I have forgotten. First off, I didn't read the entire thing yet, but I am getting there. Second off, I wanted to tell you more about the different projects that the professor carried out, in order to write the PhD and furthermore, I wanted to give you an insight of my favourite one that I think lead to most discoveries. But first, let's discuss the aim of the PhD.
So the professor already worked with the Platform up to the point when he started working on the PhD. He calls the Platform a phenomenon. Actually, he is not the one, who invented it - I found out that there is another professor from the same university, who used a set of creativity practices for group work. He was the one, who worked out the math and made the workshop of the Creative Platform. The best thing he did was adding aspects that are not normally included in creativity tools and thus create a better tool for usage. So prof. Byrge - the author of the PhD was only collaborating with the other professor before the PhD and they both wrote the articles on the Creative Platform. This all led to the interest of professor Byrge and his work on the workshop.
But enough about this - I want to tell you the research question that the professor aimed to answer with his PhD. He knew already that the Creative Platform works when it is set up the right way and everything is according to the guidelines of the tasks. So he wanted to know more about why and how is the Creative Platform working. His main research question was:
Research interest is to conceptualise, i.e. provide meaning and understanding, of the set of practices that constitutes the Creative Platform?
The professor needed three different sub-questions to the main one, in order to give an in depth knowledge about the Platform. So he split the why and the how questions and he added the how can the Platform be used for entrepreneurship and creativity teaching.
I hope you had the gist of the PhD - I promise to go through it and make it brief and simpler for understanding further on in my articles. But now, I want to summarize the case that I find very interesting. Prof. Byrge together with the municipality of Odense (a city in Denmark) carried out a 1.5 year action research project, thus giving the professor a much better understanding of the four pillars of the Creative Platform - motivation, confidence, concentration and knowledge application. The project was called Play and Learn in Product Development. He carried out an empirical study, meaning that he created surveys with questions, in order to divide the two sub-questions from the main PhD research question - precisely the why and the how. He further split the different parts of the Platform and created questions of different types. Furthermore, he carried out video interviews and he made a rating of the ideas that were generated during the 1,5 year of study.
The results were discussed very thoroughly and split as well by category. I will try to make a brief overview for you by simplifying this, therefore I will discuss each pillar of the Creative Platform on its own:
Concentration - the concentration was not constant during the entire creative process; it was constant only in the morning and furthermore, all mornings during the study; in the afternoon the level of concentration falls down, due to tiredness; it also relates to motivation and knowledge application; it is also said that the concentration makes the atmosphere;
Motivation - motivation is somewhat equal in the first part and the last part of the creative process, which means that it constantly goes up and down; it is also not constant through the entire process; it is connected to knowledge application and concentration; the not knowing what is going to happen next ("task focus") leads to high motivation levels and engagement;
Confidence - confidence is constant during the entire creative process; because the environment created is with no judgement, there is free interaction amongst the participants; the confidence relates to knowledge application; no difference in the level of confidence in the different parts of the creative process; it is build up to a certain level on each day during the creative process;
Knowledge application - it relates to all other pillars of the Creative Platform; the knowledge application is to a high degree, but the results show that diversity in the knowledge application is a necessity, however not too much diversity; the results also show that some problems are suitable for a creative solution than others; there was no difference in the between the parts of the creative process and the level of knowledge application applied;
In short, these were the results of the project Play and Learn in Product Development that gave prof. Byrge most insights for the why and how does the Creative Platform function.
With this said, I want to stop right here. There will be more information about the PhD of prof. Byrge further on and hopefully you will understand the Creative Platform a little better with each article.
Thank you all for reading! Take a look at the new website - I hope you won't be shy and you will give me feedback or two.
Cheers from me!