The square one.

The importance of the first understanding.

Always, even before our first idea takes place, before we have the chance to start playing, an stablished reality and one or a few canonical forms to understand it exist.

Vert often, to accept these readings -I do not say to consider them, but to assume them as our base without any reflection over them-, can represent the first ideation depression factor: we will be, unaware, starting at the same point, with the same map and with the same vehicle a journey that we want to be different.

Although it is possible that finally it will be, it is true we would be depriving ourselves the opportunity of a more original inicial approach.

Anyone that wants to generate new ideas, whatever they are for, has first to understand the prevailing reality, comprehend the context, the ambient where that or those ideas must live.

When we do this, when we are aware of what there are, we will be able to choose or even design the square one, that is to say, the conception place of our ideas.

To change the definition of this first phase, as much in substance as in form, will change everything that comes next: in the depiction of a problem, for instance, it presents a good portion of its solution.

If when we face a conflict situation we consider it as a problem, it is possible that at a some point we will want to fix it, but if we think about it as a richness source, a generator of divergent visions that eventually can be complementary and even a mutually enhancing factor of those visions, possibly we won’t try to dissolve it, but just organize its products.

Here is when we clearly see that our definition of the basal situation, that we found before we begun to make ideas, constitutes the ground and even the first bricks of our construction.

We always have to remember that never we will operate over reality, but over the model we build of it: who ideates something, always does it over a model; sometimes inherited, sometimes created also by him, but always over a symbolic model.

Then, don’t let anyone predetermine our first step, not even our awareness.

So, the very first stages of the ideation are:

1- The observation of the prevailing reality

2- The construction of a model the most conveniently close-fitting to our ideation needs.

Seen from this perspective, not just the reality modifiers (just another way to call the ideas), are object of playing and manipulation, but the very modelization of reality it is.

In fact, the reality model will be our first idea.

ernesto alegre