Raitis Linde

Scene from a Robin Hood movie project

I had pretty much experience on teamwork while studying and working. And the practical side is much more dirty than just reading books. Understanding teamwork begins from a feeling the power of community, frustration on making decisions, having a laugh together while working, blaming each other for failures and leaving behind own ego to move forward.

Innovation – a fight between different personalities

So a teamwork is a mixure of the pleasant and the unpleasant. This system is unpredictable to some extent just like everything related to people. Some of them wants to lead, some of them doesn’t want to be lead, others have communication issues. Well, and very often – most of the team members have different characters. This is especially the case related to innovations, because innovation is most likely to happen in the mixture of different personalities and experiences. That means – a lot of arguing, crying, fighting, dealing with uncertainity, returning back, creating & trying & destroying ideas. And to actually move somewhere with ideas, everyone should be intelligent enough to understand that there are different personalities sitting around, and that disagreements shouldn’t be taken personality. Of course, there is a need also for a good leader, who can observe what is happening and put everybody on the right track again, if something goes wrong (some people are about to harm each other physically etc. ). Influence of a leader should be delicate – to much authority and creativity is limited, too much freedom and creativity flies around without a common goal. However, it is always a good idea to introduce each other in the beginning, so everybody is aware of other team member’s skills, talents, experience, personality and expecations.

But one is clear in the innovation process, team members shouldn’t afraid of constructive conflicts. These are actually quite natural (and useful) parts in giving a birth to new ideas and perspectives, in spite of that it might be exhausting to get a common sense. To get somewhere with these flying ideas, everybody should have a common understanding of what they want to achieve – do they want solve a problem, decide on concepts (of products), have a kick-start in a project … ?

Having a chance to go this stage over and over again in many projects, I learned that it is critical to learn explaining and presenting your ideas as good as possible. That could include not just story, but also quick sketches, models, mock-ups. It is important to be aware of how you are explaining your ideas, if nobody will understand the point of it, somebody else (who will present more clearly) will bring through his/her ideas.

Time to start working

Burning the brains to get innovation out

Well, after ideas have been thrown on table and common consensus has been found, it is time for actually trying out ideas. That includes building mock-ups to test on users, bulding prototypes, conducting surveys and observing users. If in the first phase there was relatively plenty of freedom and everybody were the same, then now it is a time for actually having different roles (some are good writers, some are great at listening, someone at building electronics) and responsibilities. From my experience, when there is a lack on agreement of who is doing what, then plenty of work overlays. A frustration comes out because usually the work of just one person is being chosen in such cases. And what is important, every member on team wants to feel that he/she has contributed in the success of a team.

Some personalities appear in this stage as well. There are people who prefer to work alone, and there are people who prefer to talk with other people, discuss problems etc. And of course, we can’t forget people who like to supervise everything – to worry about whole project and be sure, that everyone is doing right things.

Sounds scientifically, isn’t it? It was my topic for the portfolio exam, my viewpoint of how I understood our work so far in the semester. Basically it is about how i saw people sharing their tacit (non-articulated) knowledge when we involved them by different design objects (game, video, business model, mock-up & scenario). We had to show what we have learned through all projects, explain from our own viewpoint (teamwork, provoking, leadership etc.) and ideally – let the examinors experience our learning process by themselves (by making them to do something), and this is not easy actually.

As I have done research on knowledge concept before (while studying computer science), this theme came naturally. I am still interested in how people perceive information and how they gain knowledge.

Tacit Knowledge Acquisition Through Provocation by Design Objects

To be honest, it was a little bit unusual portfolio presentation. I am in doubt if employers would be interested much in scientifical topics or what we have learned. However, this is university and this is great opportunity for us to experiment, to learn, to broaden our horizon.

Well, I got 10 (by Danish system) which is equal to B by ECTS grading scale (hell, why European countries can’t have united grading system in practice?). I suppose I was lacking more impressive involvement of examinors. But I have a feeling of good job done and I appreciate more feedback. That’s the thing I really like, after each grade we have well-considered and useful feedback. That enabled us to improve next time.

Well, of course, there is a lot more of experience and topics I gained through our work including better understanding of teamwork, not to mention our sketching, woodwork, foam, writing classes. Well the teamwork is one big topic I want to talk about seperately. It is bloody hard sometimes to work in a team, make concensus. You better have to learn to present and argument your ideas very well, as there are often a resistance against it. However, I feel that I am improving in team work project-by-project. Most impressive things on this world are made in teams, it is a great power that needs to be practiced. Knowledge from books about teamwork topic equals almost to zero when not tried in practice.