Adhocism

The ideation workshop resonates with the notion of adhocism dealing with an existing situation through trial-and-error, adjustment and readjustment to address a problem quickly and efficiently. It is an approach to creative design that relies on our ability to everyday improvisation particularly in using resources already at hand. A purpose immediately fulfilled is the ideal of adhocism; it cuts through the usual delays caused by planning, bureaucracy and hierarchical organisation. Indeed the man-made environment is built up of fragments from the past and most creations, and therefore ideas are initially ad hoc combinations of past elements or subsystems. Moreover, adhocism is satisfyingly familiar in that it is what people do all the time in dealing with the unexpected - tacit kinds of knowing but unexamined or unexpressed, a basis of most human behavior, as in 'you work with what you have'. What signifies successful adhocism is creative activity that shows in the novel adjustment to the situation, the clever new use of resources (including skills). Good adhocers, then, deal well with uncertainty. They experiment, try something new, take a small step to discover what works. They show skills in adapting the available resources to the situation, or in adapting themselves to the circumstances. Source: Jenkins, C and Silver, N (1972) Adhocism: The Case for Impovisation. MA: MIT Press.