what?

this is from the whatif website - "Ideas are often the fun part of innovation - it's making them happen that hurts! Creativity without action is an expensive indulgence. Action without insight is worse!" apart from deploring all the exclamation marks I don't know if I agree with this - action without insight often leads to a more interesting insight.

'consider - act' is less inventive than 'act - reflect'

they also talk about the value of environment. which I agree with and I've been there, and it's a good environment. But it's a cliche. it's all beanbags and children's drawing. it's too comfortable.

Actually that's a thought. Perhaps the problem with whatif and all their stuff is that it's too easy. it's too comfortable. They're so concentrated on getting people to relax and be comfortable with putting ideas forward that they forget to stretch people. What the world needs is an 'extreme brainstorming' company. Because people who are used to having and evaluating ideas find brainstormings deeply frustrating - too much timewasted pursuing dumb thoughts. Because their genuine experience and pattern recognition abilities are there to help them weed stuff out. So you need a way of stretching creativity out of people who are used to being stretched.

What would that environment be like? It would confront you with stuff you'd never seen before. it would allow you to act then reflect; rather than consider then act. I guess it would allow for rapid prototyping. (It would concentrate on quality rather than quantity) (this is problem with brainstorming - it can easily becomes an intellectual game about creating a set number of ideas, so everyone can say look we made 200 ideas - rather than a creative exercise about actually solving problems.)

whatif? are like an outward bound course - taking regular folk out into the wilds. what creative companies need is the equivalent of ray meers - stretching their expertise. or do they? isn't this what makes them good? isn't this what they already do for themselves?