CONCLUSIONS
Reaching conclusions in a book that is about the future is not a good idea – as the future is always open and we want our readers to treat this book like a developing conversation rather than a panacea solution. Like any great Dream Café conversation, your ability to engage in challenging discussions with an open mind is likely to lead to enlightened conclusions, whereas entering the journey with a conclusion already in mind will take you back to where you started. The art of radical innovation lies in your ability to compare what you know and need with what others know. To us a great conclusion is more than the sum of the parts so here, for the record, is our part.
The range and calibre of people that you include in your café conversations will have a profound influence on the scope and quality of the outcomes. The kind of prejudices that dominate the worst kinds of institutionalized innovation process include simplistic stereotypes that lead to the exclusion of individuals or disciplines that are assumed to be incapable of comprehending, or adding to, a journey of logical engagement.
When the musician, poet, writer, artist, fashion icon and political commentator Polly J Harvey described herself she concluded: ‘I'm an artist. I'm a creative, imaginative artist. I explore what I want, to wherever it takes me, and I don't let anything compromise that.' We have met ...
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