Michael Schrage : Un espace partagé pour collaborer [en] Attention : post long!
Je retrouve ce post [que j’avais cité il y a longtemps ici]; j’ai relu l’interview en référence, et je suis sérieusement fasciné.
I believed in the cliché that it takes creative individuals to generate creative results.
However, in researching the histories of disciplines like biotech and software development […], what I really found at the core of innovation weren’t only creative individuals, per se, but rather creative relationships. Intriguingly, the key medium for managing those creative and innovative relationships was the shared space. I found that all collaboration, without exception, requires shared space. Examples abound, […].(c’est moi qui souligne).
Voilà qui remet les choses en perpective : des individus créatifs, bien sûr, mais dans des relations elles-mêmes créatives; et supportées par un espace partagé.
I found in my research […] that collaboration was grossly underreported in the literature on creativity and design and learning.
My key observation was that it takes shared space to create shared understanding. Moreover, the properties of the shared space shape the quality of the collaboration.This is important because the way you collaborate around the shared space of the whiteboard, for example, is different than the way you collaborate around the shared space of a software prototype, or a clay model,[…].
La collaboration est un élément essentiel de la création quelle qu’elle soit; et cette collaboration suppose une compréhension mutuelle; et cette compréhension exige l’existence d’un espace partagé.
Consider a conversation. In a diagram, the conversation is represented by a dotted line going back and forth between the sender and receiver. The interaction changes dramatically when you add a shared space. Most of us have had the experience of getting into a friendly discussion over lunch with a friend or colleague, when you pull out a pen and begin writing on a napkin or a piece of paper, and the other person says, "No, no, that’s not what I mean." Then they take the pen and paper from you and mark it up to modify what you were saying, and you begin conversing around the images on the paper. If a waiter were to come by and remove that paper, the conversation would go away. You are no longer talking to or with that other person. You are talking with the other person through a medium, a reference point or shared space that becomes like a little capture device, a little reflector of the conversation. It changes the point of reference for what is going on. The shared space fundamentally transforms the dynamics, not just of the representations, but also of the interaction between people. It changes the ecology of the interaction.
La fameuse expérience (que nous avons tous faite) de commencer une discussion au restaurant; puis de saisir une serviette en papier et de commencer à griffonner dessus… créant ainsi un espace partagé qui va modifier fondamentalement la nature de la conversation (à écrire un de ces jours ‘Louange de la serviette en papier’, dans le style de St John Perse ou d’Alexandre Vialatte, au choix ;-))
You know you have a good idea when you tell somebody about your idea and they respond, "That’s a good idea. Have you thought about X, Y, or Z?" That is the essence of a shared space-a platform through which other people can add value or interpret the shared space and help it become more valuable. The best shared spaces are an invitation to innovation. That’s a measure; a metric; a heuristic.
Re-cadrage sec de ‘la bonne idée’ : pas celle qui fait l’admiration de tous, mais celle qui provoque des réactions, des ajouts, des contributions… celle qui invite à la collaboration!!!
Very often the most rational and obvious thing to do, in certain cases, is to build a quick and dirty model and test it to find out what it is you need to learn, or to see how people actually interact.
Parce que la conversation autour du prototype (même "quick & dirty’) va changer radicalement de nature; pas les positions de principe, les inférences invérifiées, les affirmations impossibles à tester; mais un vrai test dans la réalité, avec un objet qui concentre l’attention, et qui réagit quand on le change ("si vous voulez savoir comment une chose fonctionne, essayez de la changer").
