Description of Challenge
Often, the most interesting interactions and conversations take place during the coffee breaks of more official conferences and meetings. People’s creativity comes to the fore when space opens up for expression and cross-pollination. It reminds us of those moments of brilliant insights that come when we step out of our meticulous work to look at the clouds or walk on the beach or spin a child through the air.Solution
True insight and innovation is created amongst the people, deeply embedded in real life and real experience, and cannot be downloaded from key speakers, books or the internet (though all those may be of help and inspiration). The question of how to open up more space for this kind of innovative creativity within conference settings, sparked off the development of Open Space.
In Open Space, people are invited to gather around a theme statement that ideally holds enough inspiration and power to evoke full participation. The participants take responsibility for what happens. They invite others to meet around specific issues of interest. They make sure they do what inspires them most, and go where they are attracted most as they move between the spontaneously emerging landscape of conversations and interactions arising from the group. All meetings are announced on a large notice board or wall – this is where order is brought to what might otherwise seem like a very unpredictable flow of events.
Four principles apply (inviting us to be present with what is, instead of resisting):
1. Whoever comes to a meeting are the right people.
2. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have.
3. Things will start when they are ready, and whenever they start is the right time.
4. When it is over, it is over.
There is also one law, the law of two feet. Briefly stated, this law says responsibility for a successful outcome in any Open Space Event resides with exactly one person: each participant. Individuals can make a difference and must make a difference. If that is not true in a given situation, they must take responsibility to move to a new place where they can make a difference.
