Spaces to be More Creative

Sure you can be creative in your office cube or in one of the large conference rooms with the walls plastered with sticky flip chart pages or butcher paper, but what if you want to really get your fingers dirty creatively? Then what?

Earlier this week, the Brand Autopsy team took off our scrubs and visited two creative venues in Chicago – the Thinkubator and the Catalyst Ranch.

The Thinkubator is the creative HQ for SolutionPeople. Founded by Gerald "Solutionman" Haman in 1989, he converted warehouse space in Chicago's West Loop into a training space for his KnowBrainer innovation tool as well as a romper-room for innovative thought. (He has a toy collection that would make Santa Claus jealous.)

Visiting Catalyst Ranch was like visiting Pee-Wee's Playhouse. Founded by Eva Niewiadomski in 2002 she gutted a space in Chicago's historic Haymarket Square and transformed the space from sparse to stimulating. She has several creative spaces ranging from small to huge to accommodate all sizes of thoughts.

Here's how they describe their philosophy at the Catalyst Ranch.

"We, the Ranch Hands of Catalyst Ranch, believe that ideas, learning and breakthrough thought thrive when people are placed in an environment that stimulates and invigorates the senses. It's important to take individuals out of the typical boring, staid, colorless cubicles and conference rooms where they're ensconced through their daily working lives..."

Other places I've heard of to be creative (that I still want to visit) include:

< a href="http://www.eurekaranch.com/eureka/default.asp" target="_blank">Eureka Ranch – founded by innovator and author Doug Hall. Located in Cincinnati, Ohio Hall was one of the first people I had read about who encouraged the take your shoes off and act like a kid on order to break out of the stiff office environment and get the creative juices flowing. They use a combination of innovation and statistical analysis to create their meaningful marketing.

Here's how they describe what they do at Eureka Ranch.

Our specialty is the invention of ideas that offer a meaningful difference i.e. ideas that offer a difference that makes a real difference to a specific target audience. In classic research terms this means ideas with high scores in BOTH purchase intent and uniqueness. These are the types of ideas that tracking studies indicate are twice as likely to survive long term and four times less likely to require extensive price discounting.

To read about Hall's philosophies on being creative and innovative, check out his book Jump Start Your Brain.

ThinkShop - while not a destination space per se, they bring together teams to help drive innovation for companies. They have offices in Seattle and NYC. Here's how they describe themselves...

Inspired Innovation: a creative idea that becomes a reality. ThinkShop brings together teams to create inspired innovations. The types of solutions we help teams develop come in many forms, from new products that create new revenue streams to processes that increase productivity to programs that make people feel better about their work.

Spaces to go, people to hire... Do you know of any other creative, brainstorming, strategic ideation, and playhouse type locations?

Comments

[Jackie Huba]

How about the Creativity Suite at the Embassy Suites?

[as noted on the Experience Economy Evangelist Blog]

[Ivan Raszl]

Great post! Very inspirational. :)

I think these rooms are one off. After the novelty fades, they will not be any more inspiring than a cubicle. The point is to change perspective all the time.

btw, I wrote about this subject several times on my blog:
what inspires you
keep your creative juices flowing
how to come up with creative ideas
accidental creativity

[PcGeller]

My blog focuses on creative and innovative topics of all sorts. I can often come up with solutions and ideas "on demand"