Designing the Workshop Process for Generating Innovative Ideas: Theoretical and Empirical Approach

Abstract

Generating new ideas is exceedingly important in today’s rapidly changing environment. Although numerous academic institutes provide workshop programs to generate innovative ideas, little theoretical or empirical research exists which investigates the thinking processes of idea generation for enhancing the appropriateness of ideas generated through workshop facilitation. This study reviewed existing models of creative process and found that incubation and deliberation process is crucial for generating a new idea. Thus, we propose a workshop process and effective tasks that encourage participants to generate appropriate ideas. We conducted two different types of workshops: with deliberation session and without it. As a result, we observed a slightly but statistically significant relationship between having a deliberation session and generating an appropriate idea. This paper proposes a workshop design method based on theoretical and empirical supports to enhance thinking skills of participants in new idea generation.